Usain Bolt says his whole world crashed in when he was booed by the Jamaican crowd. Photo: Getty Images
The world’s fastest man Usain Bolt has revealed that he almost gave up sprinting in 2006 when he was booed by Jamaican fans for pulling out of a race injured.
The star, who was only 19 at the time, began his leg of a 4 x 400m race at the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, but soon had to stop after pulling his hamstring.
As he limped off the track, some home fans decided to boo him. Some even shouted that he’d simply given up because he knew he wasn’t going to win.
In an exclusive extract from his new book, Faster than Lightning: My Autobiography, serialised in The Times, Bolt describes how the incident left him questioning his ability as a top-level sprinter and his desire to continue his promising career.
Bolt wrote: “Honestly, I had never imagined a time when a Jamaican crowd – my own people that had cheered me on so loudly when I’d won the World Junior Championships in 2002 – would boo me as I came off the Kingston track.
“Forgot the pulled hamstring, this was pain on another level. I was only 19, and the criticism hit me hard.” – Jamaica Observer
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