FALSE dawns are recurrent in British sprinting, but could Cameron Tindle, a 17-year-old Berwick schoolboy, reverse that trend?

Three UK athletes (Adam Gemili, Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, and Christian Malcolm) have won the world junior 100 metres title since its inception in 1986. Another five, including Scotland's Jamie Henderson, have claimed medals, yet such success seems a poisoned chalice. None has graduated to a senior 100m title at World or Olympic level.

Tindle has just returned from the Commonwealth Youth Games in Samoa with 100 metres bronze. His time of 10.42 sec would have won the Scottish senior title six times since 2005 and ranks 10th on the Scottish all-time list. Only three athletes have gatecrashed that elite since 1987, and Tindle is the first in more than a decade.

In 2004 there was Olympic relay reserve Nick Smith; in 1997 Dougie Walker (European 200m champion); and in 1996, Ian Mackie, Olympic 100m semi finalist in Atlanta. Olympic champion Allan Wells did not break 11 seconds until he was 24, and heads the rankings ahead of Mackie, having held the Scottish best at 10.11 since 1980.

Four of the Scottish top 10: David Jenkins, Wells, Cameron Sharp and Drew McMaster, won Commonwealth gold in the 4 x 100m with a UK record in 1978.

Sharp, equal third with Elliot Bunney, won European 200m silver; Bunney was European junior 100m champion and a member of the GB silver-medal Olympic relay quartet in 1988; and Henderson followed Bunney as European junior champion. Jenkins, European senior 400m champion at 19, won Olympic 4 x 400m relay silver in 1972.

Henderson was youngest-ever winner of the UK senior 100m title while still at Edinburgh Academy. He's the only Scot to have run faster than Tindle at such an early age – just 16 days younger than Tindle when he did so.

The prodigious Tindle finished fourth in the 200m final in Samoa, and earlier this year reached the 200m final at the World Youth Championships in Columbia. He is 11th on the Scottish all-time list at that distance.

He has achieved all this within two years of starting athletics, and while operating in a sprint vacuum. His nearest track is an hour's drive from home. Most of his training has been done alone, on grass, round Pier Field, Berwick Cricket Club's ground at the mouth of the Tweed.

Tindle had been winning races since primary school, and Berwick High School pupils reported this fast kid to local coach Henry Gray, mentor of Commonwealth 800m finalist Guy Learmonth. "I told them to invite him to our training group," said Gray, "but it was two years before he showed up."

Tindle was playing at outside centre or on the wing with Northumberland School of Rugby, and scoring regularly. "I had trials with Border Rievers, but because I was doing county rugby in England, it was a choice between the two. I was not playing rugby that long when I tore a cartilage, and never really played again."

Gray admits he'd not be surprised if Tindle was on the fringe of the Olympic relay squad next year.

Tindle is "surprised" to have run so fast in Samoa. His previous best was 10.63, for seventh in the English under-20 championships. "I came looking for a pb and did not think my medal chances were that great," he said.

Tindle is aware of those World junior medallists who never stood on top of the podium as seniors. He won't let speculation on potential go to his head. "You just do things in training to try to avoid [failing to progress] it happening. I do little sprint training – just running. I have all the strength training to come. I'm taking it slowly.

"I focus on the short term and getting the job done, not dwelling too much on the future. Hopefully I will go on and run big times, but it's about what I need to be doing now. Obviously I'd love to represent my country at the Commonwealth Games. Once the standards are out I'll be working towards them straight away."

Gray takes sessions each week, round the cricket pitch and in the grounds of various stately homes. Sprint coach Bruce Scott does the others at Tweedbank, an hour's drive for Cameron's parents.

Based in Earlston, where he runs a sports therapy clinic, Scott sees sprint coaching: "from a growth point of view. Cameron provides a unique problem. He is too fast for his body."

At 5ft 7ins and 9.5 stones – he's the antithesis of the sprint powerhouse stereotype. "He has never seen the inside of a weights room," says Scott who gives massage therapy twice a week. "I've seen youngsters doing big weights. They get problems which never go away. Keep him light. Make him strong."

Scott won the big sprint at Jedburgh as a pro, and was on a prep for the New Year meeting but jumped the gun and was pulled a metre. So it was "emotional" to have trained Tindle to win the New Year Sprint this year.

Because Tindle has no challengers, training involves others in the group being set up off marks ahead of him in the pedestrian tradition.

Columbia and Samoa disrupted proper sprint training focus – a three-week prep instead of three months. A levels and university beckon. Tindle and his coaches know he has a long way to go. But scope for improvement is enormous for Scotland's most exciting sprint prospect in a generation.