Usain Bolt has revealed that ‘politics’ denied him the chance of running at the 2003 World Championships.
The Jamaican sprinting star admitted that he was supposed to run at the competition but was prevented from doing so.
Just a few months before, he had won the the Jamaican National Championships with an electrifying 200m time of 20.28.
He also equalled the world junior time and was unquestionably going to be the next star of the sport.
This made Bolt‘s exclusion all the more controversial.
Speaking on the Meet the Mitchells podcast on YouTube, he explained: “A lot of people do not even know I went to the 2003 World Athletics Championships in France.
“I was there when Asafa Powell false-started alongside Jon Drummond when he laid down on the track.
“I was there that year. I was supposed to run, but it was a long story. There was a lot of politics involved in the system revolving around the JAAA because I was young and new. I was the one that won trials and had hit the times needed.
“I was assured that I would be running in the 4×100 meters, but when the event came, I was prevented from running. But I was a junior and did not know much.
“But you go through it all and you learn, and I joined Glen Mills two years later. Things started to evolve.”
Speaking on his early talent in his youth, he explained: “As a junior, I was so good with just a little bit of training.
“The ones I’d seen from age three or four, nobody could beat me. I’d win senior trials at 16 or 17. I was at a level where it was easy because I felt like this was it” he said.
This comes just days after Bolt revealed on The Fix podcast that he could have ‘broken the record again’.
His time of 9.58seconds over 100m from the 2009 World Championships in Berlin has stood for over 15 years.
Just four days later, he set the current 200m world record before completing the set with a 4x100m best at London 2012.
However, he believes he would have gone even quicker in 2011 had it not been for injuries.
“If I hadn’t got injured in the season, I would have broken the record again.
“That year, I was floating. I was running very well and the coach was excited. It was the first time I heard him say we were going to race and break the world record.”
As for the future of his record, he admitted that ‘anything is possible’, particularly as Noah Lyles targets the accolade himself.
“Track and field is evolving fast with the new spikes, everything changes. It’ll take some work but records are records.”
Bolt believes that fellow countryman Oblique Seville to be the one to take Jamaica back to the dominant force it once was in sprinting.
“Oblique can do it. If he can stay fit through the season and get it right, he can do it because I’m sure there’s something there, the ability to do it,” Bolt said.