International athlete Aliann Pompey, junior star Randy Lee and collegiate champion Marian Burnett are keeping the statisticians busy just a few weeks into the indoor season.

Pompey, the 2002 Commonwealth Games 400 metres champion, in her first event of the season on January 10, ‘endorsed’ her phenomenal performance of last year with a blistering run at the Fordham/St John’s Universities Collegiate Invitational at New York’s Armory track to record the world fastest time at 400 metres (53.27s), this year.

Six days later, the Guyanese half-miler lowered her time to 52.8s (hand-timed) when she returned to the same track at the NY Road Runners Club’s ‘Thursday Night at the Races’ meet.

The multiple Guyana, South American and collegiate record holder was aiming to eclipse her 1999 personal best (PB) indoor time of 52.21 at the mid-January meet, but suffered a stumble at her start “when I almost fell on my nose”, which evidently affected her ‘flow’. She still managed to beat the next athlete by a full 4 seconds, and her time was later ratified to be another ‘world leader’, however it only lasted for a couple of days as Russia’s Oleysa Zylina stole the spotlight in Europe with a 52.62s run.

The following morning an evidently elated Pompey said her performances represented “a progression in the right direction … surely I cannot complain”.

Asked about her coach’s reaction, she opined, “he’s not too eagerly impressed; what I had to do is break my PB”. Pompey said she is thinking ahead to get the times to assure automatic places in elite meets on the world circuit aimed at landing her in this year’s World Indoor Championships in Birmingham, England, where she hopes to, again, reap “British good fortune”.

She stated that since she had not competed on the indoor circuit since 2000, she has to work arduously on erasing the disadvantage she faces as a result of not being listed in recent statistics.

Pompey returns to the track tomorrow at the New Balance Games to contest the 500m, an event she has not done in almost three years since her PB of 1:09.23 in Boston. She is also making arrangements to take a short break from her competition schedule to return to Guyana for an important engagement.

Following Pompey’s feat, Guyana claimed another historic moment at the 2nd Montgomery Invitational in Landover, Maryland, when Randy Lee ‘scorched’ the PG County Sportsplex indoor track with a sensational win in the 400m in 49.95s. The Archbishop Carroll H.S. student ‘spiked’ his name into the meet’s record books as the holder of the fastest high school time. In a photo finish, the 15-year-old Lee edged out favourite and namesake Dean Lee of McDonough High by 3/100th as they both beat the old mark of 50.6s set by Darryl Young of CH Flower H.S. last year.

The former Atoms athlete’s accomplishment on January 11 is even more astonishing considering his recent arrival in a frigidly cold U.S. on a scholarship, and his limited experience of indoor conditions.

It is reported that Lee recently underwent an extremely intense workload at a junior meet, and has raised the attention of his former coach Foster Sampson who has expressed concern. However, track and field analysts have likened the experiences to the standards associated with “competition orientation, especially at this level in the U.S.”. “It is not unusual for athletes to go through this ‘feeling-out period’ … but things will fall into place to the athlete’s ultimate benefit soon,” they assured.

For her part, Marian Burnett is aiming to make it two collegiate indoor titles in as many tries as she starts out the season ranked No.2 at 800m, according to the prestigious U.S. publication, Trackwire Dandy Dozen that predicts performances during the track seasons. Burnett is topped by last year’s outdoor champion Alice Schmidt of North Carolina whom she had defeated at the 2002 Indoor meet.

Additionally, Burnett’s school Louisiana State University (LSU) has the historic achievement of holding down No.1 rankings for both men’s and woman’s Indoor titles this year. It is the first time that one of the 512 NCAA Division I universities has the top rankings in both categories for the same meet.

Burnett ran unbeaten at the collegiate level in 2002 and began her indoor campaign last Saturday at the SEC Quin Championships in Arkansas by contesting the distance medley relay which her team won in a season leading11:36.37s, beating the home team in second place by nearly 36 seconds. Burnett’s DMR inclusion was a move to ‘ease’ her back into championship shape following a performance-limiting injury, which developed at the end of the X-Country season last November.

Pompey, Lee and Burnett, as well as other Guyana-born runners in the U.S. will be looking to improve as the indoor season progresses. Pompey. In particular, regards the achievement as an excellent start to her campaign this year after she took a break from competition since her historic feat in England last July. She noted that herself and Burnett, like most of the region’s elite athletes, could not have participated at last December’s CAC Games in El Salvador. She cited that the meet clashed with their academic commitments, coupled with “the fact that it was way outside of most western athletes’ prearranged training and competition seasons … though we would have most likely medalled there.” However they both assured that the chance to rest and recuperate will “be beneficial and reap dividends this year”.