“It was jaw-dropping,” admits his great rival, McKoy.

“We just looked at each other [while waiting for the next heat] and said ‘OK, we know who’s going to win. Who’s going to get silver?'”

But Jackson admits doing “no preparation at all” for the second round.

“It was just the second round,” Jackson says. “They’ve all seen what I can do so I can’t be bothered. Let me do a bit of stretching and just race.”

His coach Arnold warned him of the consequences.

Jackson finished second in a messy race but, after hitting the fifth hurdle, ripped his oblique muscle down his left side – a crucial muscle in lifting your leg to hurdle.

It proved costly and he could only finish seventh in the final.

“You accept it if somebody’s better than you,” says Jackson. “But I was the best.

“You cannot fathom the depth of depression you go into.

“It’s everything in your life – everything. You realise you will never have this time again. You go from hero to zero in the blink of an eye.

“It took a whole year for that to vanish.”

He faced accusations he was a ‘choker’ and there was even an advert that showed a bottle on a set of hurdles, suggesting Jackson couldn’t cope in the big moments.