American hurdler jogs the entire way during Olympic race and bizarrely explains why in interview

An American hurdler has explained why he jogged an entire race at the Olympic Games in Paris.

Week two of the Olympics sees the track events come thick and fast, with some of the biggest names in athletics looking to write themselves into the history books.

With so many elite athletes competing, minute factors can prove to be the difference between winning a medal and going home empty handed.

That includes using event rules to your advantage, as American hurdler Freddie Crittenden did on Sunday morning.

The Paris Games is the first Olympics to have repechage rounds in some track events.

Traditionally track events started with the heats, with the best finishers from each heat qualifying for the semi-finals.

However, in 2022 World Athletics - the governing body of athletics - introduced repechage rounds in some events, which are essentially second chances for athletes who fail to qualify for the semi-finals though their performance in the heats.

On Sunday, Crittenden was competing in his first-round heat in the men's 110-metre hurdles when he pulled up and jogged to the finish line in 18.27 seconds, finishing in last place and almost five seconds behind the leader.

Fans were left stumped as to why he did it, given that he clocked a time of 12.93 seconds in the same event at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships earlier this year.

After the race, he revealed in an interview with NBC that he jogged on purpose in order to give his body chance to recover from an injury that he's been carrying ahead of the repechage.

"It was an intentional choice," Crittenden said. "Everyone gets through to the repechage. … So I decided to just, not make an emotional choice, make a smart choice, give my body time to recover a little bit from being aggravated, lean on my medical doctors, lean on God, and just wait for the repechage round, come out here and try to kill it in the repechage round."

The top three finishers in each heat advanced to the 100-meter semifinals, so had Crittenden tried and failed to get in the top three, he would’ve risked further injury to end up in the repechage anyway.

By saving himself for the repechage round on Tuesday, he'll theoretically come up against a weaker field with the fastest racers already advanced to the semi-finals and will get an extra two days to prepare to give all-out effort.