Canadian teen Morales Williams unbothered by world-record nullification, sets high hopes for Olympics

Canadian sprinter Christopher Morales Williams set a world record in the indoor men's 400 metres — or so he thought. 

After recording an all-time mark of 44.49 seconds at the NCAA SEC championships on Saturday, World Athletics was unable to ratify the 19-year-old's time due to a starting block issue.

Even though the technicality that was out of his control prevents Morales Williams from holding the world record, he's not allowing the starting block issue to put a damper on his achievement.

"It's still considered the world's fastest time, so it honestly doesn't even bother me too much," Morales Williams told CBC Sports. "Because it's still the collegiate record, it's still the national record, and it's still the fastest time, so it doesn't actually take away from anything.

"Just thinking about it and the fact that it's real, it just still surprises me that it happened all so quickly."

The Vaughan, Ont., native's performance is ineligible for submission to World Athletics because of the need for a Starter Information System (SIS) to be in operation at every meet, which is a requirement per rule 31.14.5.

"You have to have different things for a record to be ratified, and one of them is the SIS starting block," Morales Williams's Georgia coach, Caryl Smith Gilbert told CBC Sports. "If you ever watch a world championship or a big meet, they have a little speaker on the back and they tell the starter if a person's reaction time was too fast and make sure everyone has a fair start — we did not have those blocks.

Regardless, he still ran the fastest-ever time in the men's indoor 400m — even if he doesn't have the official world record.

Congratulatory messages poured in for the University of Georgia collegian, with friends,