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by DINESH WEERAWANSA reporting from South Korea

BUSAN, Wednesday. - John Smith, the world famous coach of Olympic gold medallists Maurice Green and Ato Bolden predicted Sri Lankan sprint queen Susanthika Jayasinghe to go for even greater achievements in her career in the years to come.

In an exclusive interview with the 'Daily News', Smith said he is pretty impressed by the performances of Jayasinghe. "I saw her running here. She has an impressive last dash. If she concentrates on her start and get onto the top gear quickly, then she should be able to do even better at Olympic and World class meets. She should pay more attention on her start, which would make her complete world star," said Smith when I had the rare opportunity of talking to him at the athletic warm-up arena of the Asian Games main Sajik stadium here today.

The experienced coach, who has been guiding American double gold medallist at the Sydney Olympics and sprinter Maurice Green, talked highly of Jayasinghe's style of ending a race. "She has a superb last 60 m dash just like Maurice Green in the men's 100m. This is an advantage. All what she needs is to combine that with a better start than now.

That would put her in good shape to compete neck to neck with any other woman sprinter in the world," said Smith who is in South Korea with some of his top athletes from Saudi Arabia taking part in the 44-nation Games in this harbor city. Amongst them are Jamal Al Safaar (men's 100m) and Hadi Somayli (men's 400m hurdles) who have already won gold medals at the Asian Games here and Hamdon Al Bishi, who is set to win the 400m gold.

Jayasinghe emerged as the fastest woman ever in the 50-year-old Asian Games history when she clocked 11.15 seconds to win the women's 100m gold medal on Tuesday evening.

She broke Chinese Xuemei Li's Asian Games women's 100m record of 11.27 in Hiroshima, 1994 in the first round heats itself - 11.16. Then in the final, she bettered her own new record by one hundredth of a second.

Smith said Jayasinghe needs proper guidance and concentration to get a better start and if she could do that, she could improve on her present timings, which he feels are 'quite impressive' for a South Asian athlete. Jayasinghe too admitted that she is weak in her start.

"As usual, I got off to a bad start but I made use of my strength in the last dash to win at the end," Jayasinghe admitted after winning the gold.

The man who has produced many Olympic stars, Smith predicted Jayasinghe to do the 100m under 11 seconds soon. "She could do that. I'm sure that your athlete would better her timings and do the one hundred metres under eleven seconds anytime now," he said. He is a man with a lot of experience and knowledge and he would never make such a prediction for nothing. It seems Smith has identified that better skills of Jayasinghe are yet to come with right technique an a world class training.

On her way to the first ever Asian Games gold medal, Jayasinghe won a sprint double at the 2002 Asian Championships in Colombo last year and also that elusive bronze medal in women's 100m at the World Cup meeting in Madrid, Spain last month. "For the next two years, my mind would be focused on one thing, an Olympic gold medal. I want to do that for my country before I hang up my spikes," an ambitious Jayasinghe said.

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