ORLANDO, Florida — After appearing to abandon his first love for the more glamorous flat sprints, the 100m and 200m, Dwight Thomas returned to the sprint hurdles a few years ago with almost immediate success.

Thomas broke the national record when he ran 13.16 seconds on August 28, 2009 in Zurich, breaking Maurice Wignall’s 13.17 seconds set in 2004 in Greece.

Jamaican track fans had always had high hopes for Thomas in the hurdles and were disappointed when the former Calabar High athlete made the switch to the flat events.

Thomas, however, sought to set the record straight recently during an interview with the Jamaica Observer after a training session at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida.

Thomas said he always wanted to run the hurdles as well as the flat events, but a former coach Trevor Graham had advised him against doing both. Additionally, he said running the 100m was a “business decision” encouraged by his sponsors.

“I always wanted to run the hurdles, people don’t understand,” he said. “Even when I went to North Carolina and trained with Justin Gatlin under Trevor Graham, I told him I wanted to run the hurdles but he told me it was difficult to run both at the same time and told me to choose one.”

Thomas also said: “At the time the market for the flat 100m was much better so I picked the 100m over the hurdles, but I had no problems doing both.

“It was a business decision and my contract at the time was a sprinter’s contract, plus shoe company wanted me to run the 100m.”

Thomas, who has a gold medal in the 4x100m relay from the IAAF World Championships in Berlin in 2009 after running the lead off leg in the preliminaries, has a personal best 10:00 seconds in the 100m set in Linz, Austria in 2005, and 20:32 seconds in the 200m set in Bydgoszcz, Poland in 2007.

He is also a former national sprint double champion, winning the 100m/200m in 2002 and has won 100m gold medals at several levels, including CARIFTA Games Under-20, Pan American juniors and bronze in the 100m at the IAAF World Juniors in Annecy, France in 1998.

He has also ran legs of the mile relays for both Calabar and Jamaica juniors.