The 17-year-old sprint sensation claimed the coveted national men's open 100 metre crown in 10.22 seconds at the Australian track and field championships in Sydney on Saturday night.

Now Athletics Australia are launching a last-ditch bid to convince the New Zealand-born teenager to pledge his allegiance to Australia having spent eight years in Canberra.

Nketia moved back to Wellington last year, and the son of New Zealand sprinting great Augustine Nketia admitted in January "my heart, it belongs to the Kiwis".

Nketia's coach and father Gus was slated to meet with AA performance and coaching chief Christian Malcolm and NZ athletics high performance boss Scott Goodman to weigh up his future.

Nketia must decide before June's Oceania championships whether he wishes to represent Australia or New Zealand at international level after registering a qualifying time in the Australian national final.

He will then be unable to switch nationalities - just like his father did years before him - until he turns 20. Athletics ACT chief executive James Kaan says Nketia has the potential to reach great heights should he continue with the sport - regardless of which colours he is wearing.

"There is obviously huge potential. If he can stay in the sport, no matter who he runs for, as long as he stays in the sport, he potentially has a great future in sprints, both 100m and 200m," Kaan said.

"If he chose to stay in the sport, I definitely see him doing some amazing things. The way he runs, people will say if he ran a little more upright he would be like Carl Lewis.

"But when you have an athlete with such raw talent, you don't mess with the technique. You work with the strengths and make him better, and that's exactly what his dad has done."

Nketia ousted the best of Australia's rising sprint stars to claim gold and nudge Rohan Browning (10.28) and Jack Hale (10.34) onto the lower steps of the podium on Saturday.

But the teenager still has a little way to go to become the fastest man in his family - his father broke the New Zealand record at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in 10.11s.

'Gus' Nketia represented Ghana at the 1990 Commonwealth Games before switching his allegiance to the Kiwis, who he would suit up for at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Nketia isn't just turning heads on the track - the former St Edmund's College first XV rugby player's turn of foot has plenty holding him in high regard on the football field.

"Because Eddie is still 17, he is enthusiastic about track and he is enthusiastic about rugby. He's a little bit confused about which direction he actually wants to go, he's got people pulling him left, right and centre," Kaan said.

"A lot of the time he becomes a bit internalised when people start talking about that stuff. One day he loves track and field, he runs a time like he did this week and goes 'this is what I want to do'.

"Then the next week he's training with the rugby squad and he wants to do that forever because it's a group of boys he is hanging out with. As a 17-year-old you want to be around that kind of thing."

That same turn of foot was on show in the national 100m final - Nketia was slow out of the blocks but made serious ground at the halfway mark to lay the platform for a gold medal triumph.

However Patrick Johnson's 16-year-old record of 9.93s - which was expected to be broken by exciting prospect Browning - remains untouched.