It was a world record for a 15-year-old and about 10 seconds quicker than the time most of his domestic rivals are clocking. 

Running forums were bubbling with excitement and European Athletics President Svein Arne Hansen was among those to tweet praise. Many online posters spoke about the opportunity to finally produce another Sebastian Coe or Steve Ovett, while others cloaked their praise in a critique of the standards of Britain's top seniors today, who are only managing two or three seconds quicker.

The odd poster urged caution about Burgin's chances of still dominating as an adult, but they were swiftly rebutted for curmudgeonly pessimism.

But the statistics are certainly not in Burgin's favour and it is all too possible that he may join the long list of junior stars who do not maintain their momentum.

A cursory glance at the all-time records from the English Schools Athletics Championships does not prove happy reading. 

There are no names I recognise on the junior boys list and another 800m runner in Jessica Judd is the only female record holder on the women's side who has so far enjoyed anything approaching a senior international career. There are slightly more once you get into the under-17 and under-19 age groups - marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe in the senior girls' 3,000m being the most notable - but not many.

A similar picture can be painted at international level.

Take, for instance, the 2005 World Youth Championships in Marrakesh. None of the male winners have gone on to so far win at the highest levels of the sport and only three female winners have: United States sprinter Bianca Knight, Greek pole vaulter Ekaterini Stefanidi and Russian heptathlete Tatyana Chernova, who has now been stripped of most of her achievements for doping.

Of those who won gold at the inaugural 2010 Summer Youth Olympic Games in Singapore, Ethiopian 800m runner Mohammed Aman and Russia's double reigning world champion high jumper Maria Lasitskene (nee. Kuchina) - surely the greatest "Authorised Neutral Athlete" in history - are the only two who have so far won a senior world or Olympic gold medal. There are others who have come close or who won minor medals in Singapore before going on to great things, but the vast majority have not yet broken through.

Aman and a certain Usain Bolt over 200m are the only names to stand-out on a current list of under-18 men's world record holders.

This is not a problem unique to athletics. South African swimmer Chad le Clos and British taekwondo champion Jade Jones have each gone onto a glittering senior career after cutting their golden stripes in Singapore on the Youth Olympic stage. Yet they are the exception rather than the norm.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) can shout all they like about the 500 athletes from Singapore 2010 or Nanjing 2014 who have so far gone onto compete at the Summer Olympics. However, the reality is that, despite all the funding and talent ID schemes, the majority fall short.

Why is this?

In athletics, I think the biggest factor is physical. Bodies change in the teenage years and often those that were ahead of the page as juniors have been overtaken by the time others are fully developed.

A 2013 study by Joshua L. Foss and Robert F. Chapman from the Department of Kinesiology at Indiana University concluded that "top junior athletes reach lifetime best performance at a significantly younger age than top senior athletes, with most failing to improve to a level required for success at the senior level".

"One potential reason for this difference could be a difference in maturational pace," the pair added. "Successful junior athletes may be earlier maturers than top senior athletes, which may be advantageous for competitive success as a junior athlete. Successful senior athletes may be later maturers than top junior athletes, which may be advantageous for competitive success at the senior level."

There are other distractions too.

"Sex," responded a colleague when discussing this. "You hit a certain age and things like sex become more of a priority than grinding - in a different manner - at a sport."

If you are used only to winning and suddenly that becomes harder at a time when other fruits of adolescence are suddenly becoming available, it is easy to see sport shifting down the ladder of priorities.

It is also unsurprising that athletes who overtrain and live like professionals at a far too young age are more susceptible to burnout and injuries.

Wind back a few years and an American teenager called Mary Cain was considered the next big thing in running. She qualified for the 2013 World Championships in Moscow as a high school student and won the world junior 1,500m title the following year while training alongside the likes of Mo Farah and Galen Rupp under Alberto Salazar.

She has barely competed since 2016 due to injuries and it will be interesting to see whether she ever returns to her best.

In other sports there are similar but also different challenges.

A young footballer has even more off-field distraction in terms of the vast salaries and attention they suddenly receive. They also face huge competition to break through into first teams ahead of established and cheaper foreign stars from all over the world.

The "Class of '92" generation who came through at Manchester United, consisting of young players like David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, the Neville brothers and Paul Scholes, succeeded largely because they had a manager, in Sir Alex Ferguson, who was prepared to a) give them a chance, and b) make sure they did not succumb to temptation. Ferguson once personally went to a house party to drag an erring Giggs away, beer in hand.

There are also many technical as well as physical differences between age group and senior football, as there are in many other sports.

The open and attacking nature of the collegiate game in American Football is very different from the NFL. In sports like tennis and table tennis, you can tend to do well at junior level with a few good weapons but in the senior game you must have far more variety and eradicate all mistakes or you will be ruthlessly exposed. 

Tennis player Andy Murray found this out when he was physically lacking for five-set tennis as a teenager at Wimbledon in 2005. He completely changed his body shape as a result and showed the tenacity and doggedness to succeed which not all aspiring sportspeople have.

One teenager to keep an eye on is 14-year-old Japanese table tennis prodigy Tomokazu Harimoto. He has been playing competitively since the age of three and last year reached the quarter-finals of the senior men's singles at the World Championships. He is now ranked 10th in the world and seems to have the power and hunger of a man twice his age. Will he survive the temptation of late teenage years when he realises life is not all about table tennis? And will he be able to respond when opponents inevitably find ways to deal with his aggressive, forehand-heavy style?

Harimoto, incidentally, has already qualified for October's Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires and this may prove the perfect opportunity to experience a multi-sport Games before Tokyo 2020.

Despite the relatively poor conversion rate, the Youth Olympics and age group World Championships are undoubtedly key in the development of many aspiring champions, and the purpose of this article is not to dispute their importance. 

Given how the IOC spend so much of their time these days looking beyond competition and at the wider role of sport, it was refreshing to hear them talk about the Youth Olympics being, first and foremost, a way to develop elite athletes at this month's Executive Board meeting.

Burgin is another who could potentially thrive in the Argentinian capital.

To return to the Briton, I do not know much about him personally but was impressed when reading an article in Vinco Sport from December. 

He talks about "old school training" and a cross-country running base in a similar vein to Coe and Ovett. He is coached by his grandfather, while his father is also a former top athlete, and he comes across as grounded and aware of the long road ahead.

But it is foolish to get too carried away and take it for granted now that he will convert junior talent to senior success when so many others have faltered.