Legendary sprinter Usain Bolt has admitted that he chose not to attend the 2024 Paris Olympics because he felt he’d look “weird” on crutches after suffering an injury.
Bolt, widely regarded as the greatest sprinter in history with three world records, was preparing to attend the Paris Games with his family this summer and enjoy the event as a spectator for the first time. However, he ruptured his Achilles tendon while playing in a charity soccer game to raise money for Unicef on June 9.
Despite not being involved, Bolt revealed that he didn’t want to be seen in his current state on television screens around the world and decided to stay at home. “I was supposed to go with my family, but I injured myself,” Bolt said on the “High Performance” podcast.
“I was playing a charity game, a football match, for soccer for Unicef and I ruptured my Achilles. I didnt want to go on crutches. Its my first time going without and not competing, so it would look weird for every time you see me on TV Im on crutches like this. So I was just like, you know what, let me just stay home.”
Bolt still misses competing in the Olympics and has now missed the last two events as the Tokyo Games in 2020 was conducted without spectators due to COVID-19. It was the first Olympics that Bolt had missed since making his debut in Athens in 2004, and he struggled to watch.
“I really missed it. I was like, I wish I was there,” he previously said in an interview with AFP. “Because for me, I live for those moments. So it was hard to watch.”
Bolt even believed at the age of 35 that he was capable of winning a medal in the men’s 100m, even though Italian sprinter Lamont Marcell Jacobs won with a time of 9.80 seconds. “My coach said something to me at the end of my career. He said, ‘People are not getting faster. I was getting slower.’ I never looked at it that way,” said Bolt.
“And it’s the facts because a lot of guys don’t really get faster. Because I have pushed the barrier so far and then I started going backward time-wise, so for me, 9.80 was possible to get done.”
The men’s 100m was won by USA’s Noah Lyles in Paris, who revealed ambitions to break Bolt’s record prior to the 2024 Olympics. Lyles ran a 9.79 second 100m-sprint to clinch gold but was still clear of Bolt’s world record of 9.58, and Olympic record of 9.69.
Bolt remains the inspiration for most sprinters, but while watching from home, he sent Lyles a message after his record went untouched. Bolt posted photos from his victories at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, with the caption “1 of 1” to signify that he cannot be replicated.
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