Whyte (18), a commerce student at the University of Otago, finished third in the 400m semifinal at the world junior championships and narrowly missed the cut. His time of 46.83sec ranked him 11th.
Whyte telephoned his coach, Brent Ward, after the race and they have now set their sights on the senior world championships in Moscow next year and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, in 2014.
Whyte will be a key member of the New Zealand 4x400m relay team that could qualify for the world championships.
"Andrew ran in lane two and struggled on the tight first bend," Ward said. "He came from behind with 120m to go and went hard off the final bend, passed runners, and finished strongly."
"I wanted him to have something left at the finish and not go out too hard in the first 200m," Ward said. "It was a fine judgement to be racing but doing it relaxed and with good form down the back straight."
Whyte's target next summer is to crack the 46sec barrier and beat Cory Innes' 2006 Otago senior men's record of 46.57sec.
The highlight of the day for the New Zealand team in Barcelona was Jacko Gill's shot put gold medal.
Gill (17) dominated the event with his distance of 22.20m, just short of his personal best of 22.31m. He retained the under-20 title he won two years ago in Moncton, Canada.
He won by the big margin of 42cm from Krysztof Brzozowski (Poland) and Damien Birkinhead (Australia).
Gill would have made New Zealand proud had he also competed at the London Olympics. Questions must be asked of Athletics New Zealand's high performance officials who were so slow in nominating him.
Gill pulled out of Olympic consideration when he became frustrated at the delay and the demand to make another qualifying throw with the senior men's shot.
He wanted to put his efforts into preparing for the world junior championships. It would have worked perfectly to then go on to London, because he would have had another three weeks to get used to the senior implement.
Gill was consistent and five of his six throws were good enough to win the competition.
His sequence of throws was 21.74m, 22.19m, 22.15m, 21.84m, 22.20m and 22.02m.
Although he missed out on the world record of 22.73m, Gill set a championship record in the qualifying round with a 21.50m distance and then stretched it three times during the final.
All six of his throws in the final were further than the previous championship record.
