A former top United States Olympian has offered to help Bermudian sprinter Xavier James in his quest to qualify for this summer?s Athens Games.

Rated as the fastest human on earth at the peak of his career, Dennis Mitchell has represented the USA at three Olympic Games in the 100 metres ? in Seoul, Barcelona and Atlanta ? and is now a coach in the Florida area.

He?s agreed to take time out to help the 27-year-old Southampton resident reach his goal of competing in the Olympics for the first time.

And although he has barely had more than a week to work with James and evaluate just where the Bermudian stands competitively, Mitchell reportedly likes what he has seen so far and is optimistic that the local sprinter can reach his Games qualifying target in the near future.

Speaking from his training field in Florida, Mitchell said he and his new athlete were looking forward to tomorrow?s meet in Clermont, which would allow both to gauge just what was required for James to meet the 100 metres Games standard of 10.27.

?Xavier has only been with me a week and some change and we all want to say that he has everything that he needs, but we are weeks away from that,? said Mitchell. ?We have short-term and long-term goals, meaning that we?ve got a short time to get his body and mind developed enough to drop the time enough to go to the Olympics, but we don?t have a lot of time to get there.

?I want to get him into this meet this weekend in order to get a check mark, to see where exactly his physical abilities are and what I am seeing in practice so far is the guy is able to generate 10.2 and 10.1 pace. The issue becomes what he does with it after he gets it. He wants to run elite times so he has to understand how to run the race at an elite level.

?He is learning that very quickly and this weekend will tell me as a coach where his abilities actually lie, what I have to work on. But I am looking at him running somewhere in the 10.2, 10.3 range which will put us on a good course.?

James bumped into Mitchell while competing in Clermont three months ago ? the coach being on hand when the Gilbert Institute teacher recorded a time of 10.4 to win the 100 metres.

?I?m ecstatic to have been able to hook up with him, negotiations for training actually started back then. But I had known him pretty good prior to that,? said James, who only a few weeks ago turned down an invitation from former Bermuda Olympian Troy Douglas to team up with him in Holland and compete regularly in Europe.