Athletics: Maybe the first you heard of Paul Hession was last weekend when he improved the Irish 100-metre record to 10.28 seconds.

Maybe you weren't exactly impressed, thinking any half-decent sprinter these days would be running under 10 seconds.

Actually that's still a touchy subject. In June 1968 Jimmy Hines became the first man under 10 seconds, posting a hand-timed 9.9. Hines was also famous for wearing sunglasses during races, long before they became fashionable.

"These aren't sunglasses," he would quip, "they're re-entry shades."

Almost 40 years on and still only 53 men have broken 10 seconds, not one of them being what is loosely termed a "white athlete". In fact, they've all been of West African descent, with the sole exception of Australia's Patrick Johnson - who has an Aboriginal mother and an Irish father.

It's hard to believe no white or even Asian sprinter has broken 10 seconds. Several have come close, Poland's Marian Woronin (10.0 in 1984), Italy's Pietro Mennea (10.01 in 1979) and Ukraine's Valeriy Borzov (10.07 in 1972) being the closest.

For over two decades the old East Germany tried hard, selecting their finest athletic talents as toddlers, nurturing them with the best coaching and conditioning, and finally pumping them with steroids. Still not one of them ran under 10 seconds.

Hession's time of 10.28 is the eighth-fastest in Europe so far this year, and given he's just 24 it's likely he'll run a lot quicker - particularly as he's really a 200-metre specialist. Incidentally, his 10.28 equates to a hand-timed 10.20, which is what Jesse Owens ran in 1936 and stood as the world record for 20 years.

The 100 metres, as we know, has been riddled with drugs and loaded with cocky and flamboyant types, but the only thing remotely suspicious about Hession is how this shy and hugely intelligent medical student ended up as a sprinter in the first place.

The first we heard of him was at the European championships in Munich in 2002, when Jim Kilty, the godfather of Irish sprinting, was raving about this "new kid from Athenry" who was going to be "very, very good". So we rose at some ungodly hour for the first round of the 200 metres, only to witness Hession come careening around the bend as if running with shackles on his feet and a sharp object stuck in his back. Hession finished last in 21.28 seconds, and we didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So we cried.

Kilty, however, was right, and Hession has made steady progress in the years since. He's put his medical studies on hold and now works with the Scottish coach Stuart Hogg, based most of the year in Fife. In March he ran an Irish indoor 60-metre record of 6.61 seconds, making the European final in Birmingham, and realised then he was in for a big summer.

"Things had gone very well indoors," he says, "running quicker and quicker throughout with every race. I knew that speed was still in my legs, and the training had also gone very well since then. My 100-metres best before the weekend was 10.42, but really didn't reflect what I was capable of.

"I've always been the type of athlete that gets better as the season progresses, so I see no reason why I can't go quicker this year, if I get the right race, with the right conditions, because that's always the big factor in sprints.

"But my main focus this year is running faster over 200 metres. That's the event where I do hope to achieve something, make a world or Olympic final. It's very, very difficult for a European to do anything over the 100 metres, but over 200 metres there is more of a chance."

His 200-metre best is 20.56 seconds, and he'll certainly improve the Irish record, 20.54 - possibly even next Friday, having secured a lane in the season's first Golden League meeting, in Oslo. What is also certain is that his newfound fame as Ireland's fastest man won't be going to his head, that he'll remain an egoless sprinter.

"Well of course you want to make a name for yourself, to be recognised," he admits. "But that's not why I run, the reason I postponed my medical studies. Right now I'm just doing exactly what I want to do at this stage of my life.

"The medicine is something I will go back to, and that will be the rest of my life, but I want to see how far I can go with the sprinting, and focus on that until the next Olympics at least.

"But one of the reasons I'm running well is being brimful of confidence, that I can go out there and beat anyone. Confidence is a huge, huge thing in sprinting. My confidence may not be very obvious, but inside it is."

His record 10.28 seconds - which improved the 10.35 that stood to Gary Ryan and Paul Brizzel - should be taken on its own merits, because right now Paul Hession is one of the fastest white men around.

He may never break 10 seconds, nor indeed may any white man, but that's still brilliantly quick.

Try starting and stopping a stopwatch within 28-hundredths of a second and see how close he is.