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Usain Bolt reveals bizarre reason he dropped running 400m

Bolt loved all the short distance races but 400m was never his long-term priority even though he preferred it early in his trophy-laden career.

Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt has revealed what made him stop taking part in 400m despite loving the specialty in his formative years.

Bolt, the three-time Olympic 100m champion, said his coach Glen Mills was one of many people who felt the younger Bolt was better suited to the longer sprint distance than the marquee 100m event, meaning the 6ft 5ins sprinter almost ended up as a quarter-miler, much to his disgust.

The three-time Olympic 200m champion reiterated that even though he liked 400m, doing away with it and focusing on 100m paid dearly for him going by his record. 

"Running the 400m wasn’t fun at all. It was always pain. But I was good at it, so I used to do it. However much as I did it, though, I never liked it. So I stopped and went back to the 100m. You could say I’m happy it worked out," Bolt told TalkSport.

"The over-distance runs are the hardest thing we do in training, because when you feel that lactic acid you can’t walk, you can’t sit down, you don’t know what to do – it takes a while to get it out of your system,” he added.

The 11-time world champion said time wasn't everything and his focus was always the technique. "All we try to focus on is technique because, the better you get at these things, the better the times will get. When the champs come, then you can try to run fast.”

The 38-year-old  is the most successful male athlete of the World Championships. Bolt is the first athlete to win four World Championship titles in the 200m and is one of the most successful in the 100m with three titles, being the first person to run sub-9.7s and sub-9.6s races.