Katelyn Desgagne's 15 seconds of fame (16 photos)

Katelyn Desgagne earned her Warholian 15 minutes of fame on Thursday.

She took just 15 seconds to do it.

The Superior Heights student is that fast.

At the City Track and Field Championships at Jo Forman Track, Desgagne demolished a 17-year-old city record in the senior women's 100-metre hurdles.

With a slight tailwind that officials considered negligible, she crossed the finish line in 14.98 seconds - shattering the old mark of 16.40 set in 1998 by A. Reid from Sir James Dunn.

In an event in which advances are measured in hundredths of a second, Desgagne managed to cut 1.42 seconds from the city record in just one race.

Since the first women's 100-metre hurdles world record was set in 1969, it has been broken 20 times, but total change over that time has been just 1.09 seconds.

At the city meet, second-place Cameron Mihell crossed the finish line in 16.37, 1.39 seconds after Desgagne,

That was three one-hundredths of a second faster than the old record.

Desgagne also captured gold in the 400-metre hurdles on Thursday, with a time of 1:10.12, and collected two silver medals as part of Superior Heights' 4x100 and 4x400 relay teams.

Desgagne tells SooToday she found it especially difficult running on Thursday without her coach, Mike Bordin.

"He's normally here but he couldn't come for the last week or so. It's nice having his encouraging words before and after. With him not here, it really pushed me to run for him," she said.

A veteran of OFSSA competitions in 2013 and 2014, Desgagne trains two hours a day, five days a week.

As a hurdler, Desgagne tells SooToday she has been finding the transition from junior to senior distances to be challenging and she has focussed more this year on long strides. "It's really hard to get to that next hurdle. Practising the long strides was really helpful."

"She would be good at just about any event that she wanted to do. All-round ability," said another of  Desgagne's coaches, Rick Heino. 

Desgagne's performance on Thursday helped boost the Superior Heights female and combined teams to the top spot overall at the city meet.

The Huron-Superior men's team also took top honours.

The school was followed in all three divisions by Korah, St. Mary's College, White Pines, St. Basil and Notre-Dame-Des-Grand-Lacs.

Korah's Taylor Elliot also set a city record in the womens midget shot put.

Elliot threw the shot 10.83 metres, beating the previous record of 10.00 metres, set in 1981 by A. Bodnar.

NOSSA championships run next Wednesday and Thursday at E.S. Northern Secondary School in North Bay.

(PHOTO: Superior Heights student Katelyn Desgagne seen setting a city record during the senior womens 100-metre hurdles event during the Sault Ste. Marie City Track and Field Championship on May 21, 2015 at the Jo Forman Track in Sault Ste. Marie. Kenneth Armstrong/SooToday)