Jodie Williams keeping feet on the ground as lift-off approaches

She is not even expected to win a medal, and yet the appearance of Jodie Williams at her first senior international competition has dominated the build-up to the European Indoor Championships in Paris this weekend. The softly spoken 17-year-old schoolgirl who won 151 races in a row and last month snatched the senior British title from those with twice her experience has even relegated Dwain Chambers – the defending champion in the 60m, the competition's blue riband event – to a few paragraphs. Williams, who competes in Paris on the proviso that she completes her A-level maths homework, has three world titles at junior level, plus a silver medal in the 200m – a painful reminder of the first defeat of her career last summer at the world junior championships in Canada. The Hertfordshire teenager cried her eyes out on the track, but now feels the experience made her a better athlete and this indoor season is taking her first tentative steps in senior competition – in an unfamiliar 60m event – and already excelling. With no individual Olympic medals won by a British female at 100m or 200m since the 1960s and the only world championship medal Kathy Cook's 200m bronze in 1983, Williams, who broke Cook's junior 100m record last year, is being billed as the athlete to change British fortunes. Her coach Mike McFarlane – who trained the likes of John Regis, Tony Jarrett and a young Chambers – is keen to play down expectations. "Whether she performs good, bad or indifferent I just want her to enjoy herself," says McFarlane. "The 60m is an event she's not comfortable with yet because she's a young girl who doesn't yet have a woman's strength. She doesn't yet have that power to explode really well over the first part of the race, so it's going to be a new and challenging experience for her." Williams' personal best – her third of the season already – is 7.24sec, currently the seventh fastest time in Europe. But her presence in Paris is more about learning than winning any medals. At the team press conference on Thursday, the girl her friends playfully call "Moneylegs" sat at the back of the room listening quietly to her team-mates before taking centre stage in her first encounter with the massed athletics press. It was yet another test she passed with flying colours, instinctively unflustered by the questions about her. McFarlane is protective of his young protege but with 2012 around the corner he is well aware of what lies in store. "It's going to get ramped, it's going to get crazy. Come April next year it's going to be fever pitch and come June 2012 it's going to be totally unbearable." "We've got their life in our hands," adds McFarlane of the weighty responsibilities of a coach, "you've got to treat them like they're your own child." So far the strategy is working; despite Britain's head coach Charles van Commenee's public disapproval of Williams' decision not to travel to the world championships in South Korea this summer – and to instead concentrate on the European Junior championships – the Dutchman remains powerless to do anything about it. So what is it that makes Williams quite so special? Allyson Felix, the three-time world champion over 200m, was also a teen star. The American won Olympic silver in 2004 at 18 – the same age Williams will be in 2012, and says she sees herself in the young Briton. The two athletes met for the first time last summer, with Felix – Williams' athletics idol – leading a track session for the two. "I can definitely relate to her," says the 25-year-old, "there are so many parallels between us … she has that excitement for the sport and the passion. I was always wanting to race against the best no matter who the best is – she's the same. When we went out to practise at Crystal Palace I could definitely see that about her. I think that's a key quality to have to make it to the next level. I had a lot of friends who were in athletics and started at such a young age but by the time they got to high school they were pretty burned out." Burnout has been the affliction of too many promising young athletics careers, and Felix believes Williams's advisers are right to focus on a long-term strategy to manage her future. "A lot of times you think about the here and the now, your next race, but something that was great for me was having people who could look at my future, not just the next Olympics but the one after that and after that." One man who understands the difficulty of managing young talent is the coach Ayo Falola, based in Lee Valley in North London, who looked after Britain's most promising female sprinter, Vernicha James, the 200m world junior champion in 2002. James starred in the same championships in which Usain Bolt made his name, beating Sanya Richards and Felix into third and fifth place respectively. "Those people that Vernicha beat are now the best in the world in their events," says Falola, "but Vernicha never made the most of her talents. Jodie and Vernicha; they're like chalk and cheese. Jodie's got something different about her, it's her attitude. Yes, she's phenomenally talented – just like Vernicha was – but she has it mentally as well. Jodie is a good, smart, intelligent kid who's doing everything right; the others [who came before her] weren't and you could see it. It was like a time bomb ticking waiting to explode. Talk to a lot of football managers and they always say that the best kids never made it. Unless you're able to dedicate yourself to the sport you don't make it to the top." James was last known to be working for a trains company, and rumoured to be attempting a comeback, but Falola says he hasn't heard anything more from her. For many young female athletes discovering boys is their downfall, but even Williams' choice of boyfriend is one that complements her career. "I actually coach her boyfriend, Junior Ejehu," says Falola, "he's a really good kid. They went to the world juniors together – he's also a sprinter in the 100m and 200m. One little weak link can destroy an athlete, but even her choice of boyfriend is a good one. She's surrounded by sensible people. Her parents have brought her up properly and she makes good decisions." After the championships this weekend McFarlane says he will sit down with Williams and plan out her season. But no matter how well she performs in Paris, the World Championships will remain out of the question. "She's not 18 yet, she's still a child. We don't want her to grow up before her time. Why should we rush her?" Instead McFarlane hopes she will be invited to compete at senior Grand Prix events this summer, after the European juniors. "My son said to me, 'Dad, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.' If I bow to pressure to make her do more and she collapses people will look to me for a response. All we are doing is staying true to what we believe in, and we believe this is right for Jodie."