British Sprinter Who Was Faster Than Usain Bolt at 14 Now Lives Very Different Life

A former British sprinter ran a faster time than Usain Bolt did at the age of 14.

Ryan Gorman, who competed over 100 and 200 metres, ran a time of 21.76 at the England Under-17 Indoor Championships in February 2013.

Bolt, meanwhile, ran a fastest time of 20.81 before turning 15.

A year later, Gorman ran a personal best of 21.49 - just over two seconds slower than the winning 200-metre time set by Letsile Tebogo at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

And at a meeting in Poland, he ran under 21 seconds.

2016 saw further improvements, but was tinged with disappointment as he failed to qualify for the final of the World Junior Championship due to illness.

Working towards the Diamond League was Gorman's next target, and he started 2017 brightly with a series of low-21 second times.

But the Englishman then suffered a torn hamstring, which required several months of rehabilitation work before he could return to the track.

However, it was a second hamstring tear, suffered shortly after his comeback, which completely changed the course of his career.

Speaking in an interview with SPORTbible in 2014, Gorman explained: "The second time it happened, it wasn't as bad as the first one.

"But mentally, for about three years after it happened, I was still trying to get back to where I wanted.

"I just couldn't get past my injury, mentally. Physically, I was absolutely fine. I could run a race. But I could feel my hamstring was going to go. And I still can't get past that fear of tearing it again."

Gorman eventually decided to step back from competitive athletics altogether in 2022 after frank and honest discussions with his family.

Now 26, he has tried his hand at rugby sevens - which resulted in another torn hamstring - and now works as a personal trainer and sports therapist.

"It took my mum and now wife to sit me down and say, 'Look, we've got something to think about'," he said.

"At that point, I was so obsessed with getting back to where I wanted to but disappointing myself in the process, that I was just getting more and more depressed about things.

"They sat me down and my mum said, 'We've got to figure something out here'. Because at this point, athletics is not happy or healthy'.

"It took me a long time, a few years, to wrap my head around it. To go, 'I've got a young family now and I need to support them, I need to accept that my athletics career is not going to carry myself and my family to where we want to, financially.

"For me now, it's just about focusing on gym, going strong over that and hopefully mentally preparing myself for if I do want to go into a sport.

"I've got 10 years of experience, cardio, skeletal. And I've got a degree in sports therapy, so I combine all of that together.

"To me, the injury physically is easy to repair. But mentally, it's really difficult. And I, for one, know how difficult it can be. I know that's my downfall and it's difficult for me to get past it. But I know how others might feel about it."