Daegu, 2011. The world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt, stood at the 100m final start line, and all eyes were on him. He was 25, undefeated in championship 100m races since 2008, and the defending world champion. Next to him stood Yohan Blake, Kim Collins, and Walter Dix. The gun went off too early. And….

Bolt had jumped. A false start. Disqualified. Rule 162.7 gave no second chances. The stadium fell silent. He ripped off his shirt in disbelief, walking off the track stunned, and Bolt has carried that weight for a while, and now he has made an honest confession about the same.

On Puma’s Go Wild podcast with Colin Jackson on April 30, Usain Bolt finally opened up about that painful 2011 false start in Daegu. He didn’t sugarcoat it. “I think so throughout the season, it was frustrating because I couldn’t get my start together,” he said. “It was on and off… I was starting good now and then the next round, I’ll do bad.”

His coach kept telling him to let go of that anxiety. “Stop worrying about your start,” Bolt recalled him saying. “You’ll never be great at start. You’ll be okay.” But on that fateful day in Daegu, Bolt couldn’t switch it off. “All was on my mind was get it right. Get it right. Get it right. That’s all I was thinking.” Then came the trigger moment. “For some reason, I could swear somebody said, go and I just went… And as soon as I got on blocks, I was like, no, there’s no way.”

What hurt the most wasn’t the disqualification  but how uncharacteristic it was. “I wasn’t myself… I was always a person to be calm and join the crowd. I wasn’t doing that. I was just so focused on trying to get it right.” That mistake shifted his perspective. “It cost me the hundred metres that year,” he admitted. “I kind of sat down to myself and thought about it… there’s no one to blame. That was all on me.”

That theme,  accountability runs deep in Bolt’s reflection. “A lot of people would try to find excuses… like, oh, it was because of the gun, or there was noise… No, it was all on me.” He added, “I understand to take accountability for my mistakes and what I’ve done. And that’s why I got to live. Because if I did something as a coach, you know what? It’s my fault. I’ll do better next time. And then I’ll go fix it.

That quote — “It’s my fault” — doesn’t just end a story; it starts a reckoning. For years, critics questioned Bolt’s intensity, focus, even his injuries.

Usain Bolt has been criticized in the past

Usain Bolt, the fastest man in history, found himself on the defensive after his final race ended not in triumph, but in pain.

Following his dramatic collapse during the anchor leg of the men’s 4x100m relay at the 2017 World Athletics Championships in London, rumors swirled that the sprint legend had faked the injury because he was too far behind to win.

Bolt the responded with medical evidence. Sharing details of his injury on Twitter, the eight-time Olympic gold medallist posted an x-ray of his torn left hamstring and wrote: “Sadly I have tear of the proximal myotendineous junction of biceps femoris in my left hamstring with partial retraction. 3 months rehab. I don’t usually release my medical report to the public but sadly I have sat and listened to people questioning if I was really injured. I have never been one to cheat my fans in any way & my entire desire at the championship was run one last time for my fans. Thanks for the continued support my fans and I rest, heal and move onto the next chapter of my life #Love&LoveAlone.”