Usain Bolt didn't hesitate when naming the 'biggest regret' of his career as once-in-a-lifetime opportunity missed

Usain Bolt didn't hesitate when naming the 'biggest regret' of his legendary career in athletics.

Bolt is an eight-time Olympic gold medallist and still holds world records in the 100 metres and 200 metres.

His 100-metre record of 9.58 seconds has stood for nearly 16 years since it was set at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

No other sprinter has come close to beating that in the years since, with Yohan Blake (9.69) and Justin Gatlin (9.74) the only two sprinters to run a time faster than 9.75 seconds since 2012.

Bolt competed at three Olympic Games between 2008 and 2016 and won a gold medal in every event in which he participated, though he had to relinquish his 4x100 metre relay gold earned at Beijing 2008 after the Jamaica team were disqualified.

Team-mate Nesta Carter was found guilty of taking a performance-enhancing drug, with the entire team being disqualified as a result.

They had set a world record time of 37.1 seconds, with Carter taking responsibility for the opening leg. Carter's appeal against the decision was dismissed by CAS in 2018.

But while Bolt missed out on having a perfect record from Olympic finals because of that decision, that is not the biggest regret of his long and successful career.

Usain Bolt's 9.58 world record at 100 metres still stands today (Image: Getty)

Instead, his failure to run a sub-19 second time over 200 metres - which he has always been adamant was his strongest event - is something which he wishes had been able to do before retiring.

He told : "I am happy by what happened [in my career] and don't look back and regret the bad days, the moments when things went wrong for me on the track.

"I believe everything happens for a reason in life, so I don't look at races that I lost and wish things could have been different.

"The only thing I really wanted that didn't happen was to run sub-19 seconds. That is the only thing I really regret.

"Maybe it will never happen now. I believe I was the only who could have done it. It was not to be."

Bolt blitzed Michael Johnson's previous 200m world record of 19.32 at Beijing 2008, before running a time of 19.19 seconds a year later.

Noah Lyles ran a time of 19.31 at a meeting in 2022, though he is the only current sprinter to have come close to even matching Bolt's record, let alone run under 19 seconds.

The Jamaican's closest challenger is in fact compatriot Yohan Blake, who ran a more wind-assisted time of 19.26 back in 2011.

Blake was once considered as Bolt's successor as the spearhead of the Jamaica Olympic team and, while he won two 4x100m relay golds, never triumphed in an individual race at the Games.