The eight time Olympics Champion Usain Bolt recalled his false start and consequent disqualification in the final of the men’s 100m at the Daegu World Championships in 2011 which many still considered the only blemish in the sprinting legend’s career.
He recalled his coach Glen Mills told him at the beginning of the 2011 season that he was on pace to run faster than his 9.58 seconds world record before he sustained the injury.
“When I started that year, I was having the best season. Coach said to me that I could get the world record before the World Championships if I continued. But I lost two months of training because of injury, and so I wanted to get a good start even though Coach was telling me to stop focusing on the start because I was never a good starter,” he recounted.
But the world record holder in 100m and 200m who won sprints three consecutive Olympic titles believes that it was the easiest 100m field(Vicaut,Bailey,Collins,Dix,Carter,Lemantre,Blake and Bolt) he had lined up in at a global championship even though he false started in the final.
Speaking with fellow Puma ambassador Colin Jackson on Instagram Live last week, Bolt said: “It was one of my easiest 100m (field). Yohan (Blake) was just coming on, Asafa (Powell) was injured.”
It was the first global championships since World Athletics, then IAAF, introduced the no false-start rule.
Bolt pulled off his singlet immediately after the recall starter sounded the second gun to indicate that there was a false start and walked off the track, leaving the thousands who were in attendance in the South Korean city disappointed.
Blake claimed the title in 9.92 seconds, becoming the youngest man to win the title at 21 years, 245 days.
