OLYMPIAN Danny Talbot is leaving no room for regret as he reflects on what he describes as ‘probably the best experience of my life’.

Four years after only making Great Britain’s 4x100m relay team at London 2012, the 25-year-old sprint star made his long-awaited individual Games debut in his favoured 200m event at Rio 2016 and rose to the occasion on the biggest stage possible, clinching a new personal best of 20.25 seconds in the semi-finals.

Having matched his previous lifetime best of 20.27 as he progressed through the heats, Talbot’s third-placed finish behind eventual bronze-medallist Christophe Lemaitre and the United States’ LaShawn Merritt in last Thursday’s semis wasn’t enough for the Trowbridge Tornado to earn a front-row seat as Usain Bolt further bolstered his reputation as one of the world’s most iconic sportsmen in Friday’s final.

But when you’ve run the fastest race of your life when the pressure was cranked up to overdrive, can you really allow yourself to dwell on the ‘what-ifs?’.

Talbot, who relocated his training base from Bath to Loughborough to work with coach Benke Blomkvist seven months before Rio, certainly doesn’t think so and says that his Brazilian adventure has only bolstered his hopes for the future.

“It feels amazing, really. It was probably the best experience of my life,” the GB star told the Wiltshire Times.

“When I went to London, I was young and naïve and I didn’t really take it all in but this felt a lot different. We were watching other events on the TV in Portuguese and it didn’t feel like there was as much hype but that all seemed to make you more focussed.

“I trusted in my coach and trusted in the programme to try and make me run PBs at the right time, and I’ve got to be delighted that I ran two.

“20.12 got a bronze medal, so I wasn’t a million miles away from that – four years ago in London, it was 19.84, “It is a shame that I didn’t make the final but I can’t be too disappointed. I’m out there representing my country and doing what I love and in the end, there were only 10 people in the world that were faster than me.

“In 10 years’ time, I probably won’t be racing anymore, so I have to be proud of what I’m doing and as an athlete, you always feel that you can do even better, so now I’m concentrating on trying to go even quicker at the World Championships in London next year.”

“I don’t train for four years to be stressed or disappointed and I don’t think there’s any point in having regrets.”

Talbot returned to the UK on Tuesday but allowed himself little time for rest, with the Wiltshire ace returning to training on Thursday as he prepares to race at the IAAF World Challenge meeting in Zagreb, Croatia, on September 6.