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Johannesburg - Sprinter Carina Horn is hell-bent on an all-out assault on SA’s dust-covered women's 100m track record.
The 26-year-old has made no secret that she is after Evette de Klerk’s record of 11.06 seconds she set in Germiston in April 1990.
Horn boasts with a personal best of 11.17 which she posted in St Polten in Austria in June last year to get within 0.11 seconds of the South African record.
Her effort last year was the fourth fastest on the all-time list, with Geraldine Pillay’s 11.07 in Durban in 2005 the closest effort to improving the record.
Horn said her times during training indicated that she had it in her to break the record, but her focus was on being competitive at international meetings.
“The record is there in my times during training but when I go into a meeting it is not about the times because you have to focus on what you do,” Horn said.
“When you are in a line-up Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (Jamaican Olympic gold medallist), who recently ran a time of 11.24 seconds and my best last year was 11.17 seconds then you know you can win a race like that.”
Horn has been in consistent good form in 2014 where she posted a times of 11.21 and 11.17 in European meetings.
The Austrian-based athlete made her return to the South African Athletics Championships for the first time in three years where she won the national title in a time of 11.40 seconds running into a -2m/s headwind.
Although her participation at the national championships was hyped up to be a possible record-breaking run, the Stellenbosch track has never been kind to sprinters.
Before Horn left to train in Linz under the tutelage of Rainier Schopf in 2012, she had dabbled in the 200m and the 400m while her best in the 100m was a "pedestrian" time of 11.59 seconds.
“Since we started training together (with Schopf) we’ve decided that I should focus on the 100m because there was no use being average in three events,” Horn said.
“I just decided to do it (move to Austria), and I knew that I would have to make a few sacrifices but I decided to pursue my dream.
“If you don’t take the shot you will never know and so far it has paid off.”
She has since improved on her own national 60m record with times of 7.21 seconds and 7.20 seconds earlier this year, while threatening the 100m mark.
Horn will be competing at the Rabat World Challenge Meeting on June 14 where she will take another stab at finally breaking the 25-year-old record.
