Usain Bolt is fast, loose and wants to play professional football

Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt may hold the best time for a runner in the 100 meters and 200 meters dash, but he fancies turning his hand to professional football.

At six feet five inches, Bolt recalling his childhood in the small rural town of Trelawny, said that his mother always felt something was wrong with him, and took him to the doctor because he couldn't stay still.

"I was all over the place, climbing things. My mum goes, 'There must be something wrong with this kid', and the doctor goes, 'Nooooo, he's just hyperactive.' "

His mother, a Seventh Day Adventist, was gentle and forgiving, his father a disciplinarian who had two other children with different women.

Respect was an important word in the Bolt household. And when young Usain didn't show enough of it, he knew his father would beat some into him.

He says he could always tell when he was going in for it, because his dad became quiet.

"I'll do something and he'll talk and talk, but when he's going to beat you, he just says, 'Come here', he holds your hand and then he goes off."

He says cricket was his first love. He grew up when the West Indies was still a force in cricket. He was gifted, too, opening the batting and bowling for his local side.

"But I just happened to run fast. They said, try track and field, and I continued because it was easy and I was winning," Bolt told The Guardian.

His dad told him to give up the cricket and concentrate on track and field.

"He said I should do running because it's an individual sport, and if you do good, you do good for yourself." He cracks his fingers, they're the longest I've ever seen.

“There are things that bother me. I try not to let them, but they do," he says.

For example, he says, he was so uptight before that junior world championships final that he put his shoes on the wrong feet. "I've never been so nervous in my whole life. I was shaking because everybody was expecting me to win or get a medal. That one moment changed my whole life, because after that I was like, why should I worry?"

He still thinks it's the greatest race of his life. "I saluted the crowd, they were screaming. I was 15, in front of my home crowd, no better feeling. Gold, record, make your country really proud."

But for much of the next three years he was injured. That's when Jamaica turned on him. His own people said he was undisciplined, he partied too much, he was a good-time boy.

He stops and says: "But they're not as bad as you. You guys are awful, man." The press? "Yeah, you guys are rough on everybody. You put people under so much pressure."

"I wouldn't get married now. It would be awful. Wayne Rooney's the same age as me, he's married and got a kid. I don't think these guys are ready to get married yet. There's less stress on me. If they say, 'I saw Usain out with a girl last night', whatever, cos' I'm not married," he said.

He says, he enjoys "a couple" of Guinnesses. And in the old days? "Ah, I don't want to talk about the old days! I was really bad, because I wasn't really focused yet. I'd go all night. But I never got drunk. I don't do drunk."

In 2008, he says he had to plead with his coach to let him run the 100m in Beijing. He had been running the distance for less than a year, and was surviving on a diet of chicken nuggets at the Olympics. Not only did he win gold, he broke the 100m world record with a time of 9.69 seconds and, most astonishing, started beating his chest in celebration 15m before the finish.

He was accused of showboating, of not trying hard enough. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said, "I think he should have more respect for his opponents."