Phillips Idowu exclusive: I feel like I’ve let everyone down but it’s ridiculous to say no one could find me

I'll be in the Olympic Stadium tonight with my family but not in the position where I want to be — out there competing in the triple jump final.

It’ll hurt that I won’t be there competing but I want my kids to experience the Olympic environment and I’ll be rooting for all my rivals. I love the event and I love to see people performing well. You’d say Christian Taylor is the favourite for the gold but people do crazy things in the Olympic Games.

When I turned up for qualifying, I felt I was good enough to make the final. I was pain free and that was the main thing. I felt that the hop and skip phase on my second jump was the best of anyone in the competition, sadly I just couldn’t quite put it all together to make that final.

I really felt like I nearly had it. The timing wasn’t there and I wasn’t able to execute quite the way I wanted to. I’d worked hard to get back on the

runway after a funny year with what seemed like so many things going wrong at the wrong time. I was just unlucky. In some ways, just getting on the runway at all was an achievement in itself.

It’s just that I wanted to do Hackney, London and the UK proud. I don’t feel I did that and I feel like I’ve let a lot of people down who supported me and were rooting for me.

Even now, I still don’t completely know what happened to my body. As an athlete, I knew I wasn’t 100 per cent and I didn’t need to know the exact details of what was wrong. I just had complete faith in my physio, doctor and surgeon to make sure they did everything to make sure I was fighting fit. Over the last few years, they’ve done just that.

I’ve had neural problems, a jarred hip and pains in the back of my knees. But I didn’t really want to know the details and I realise that may explain some of the confusion that’s surrounded me. All I wanted to do was make sure I could jump. I honestly had no idea of the palaver surrounding me before my competition until just before I came to the village. It was only when I turned up to training in north London one morning and suddenly there was a reporter running towards me, like Usain Bolt doing the 100m in 9.6seconds, and a photographer hiding behind a fence.

The reporter was like, “we want to know where you’ve been” and I was like, “what do you mean?”. I didn’t understand what they were talking about and then he told me what had happened and that UK Athletics didn’t have a clue where I was.

But despite what was said, I’d been in contact with my coach, Aston Moore, and I showed the reporter some text messages to show as much. I’m not sure how this story came about. Whether or not I went to the training camp in Portugal, I was always going to enter the athletes’ village on the 5th and that hadn’t changed.

Also, the idea no one knew my whereabouts is strange as it’s there for them to see on ADAMS, the system where you have to let anti-doping officials know where you are. To say they didn’t know my whereabouts is ridiculous.

I feel the situation could have gone differently if there’d been less talking and I’d just been left to get on with my job. A statement was made saying there had been no contact with Aston but I’ve still got the messages on my phone to prove that’s not true. I’ve proved that if I’m left to my own devices, I’m a championship performer. I appreciate it didn’t work for me this time and it wasn’t to be but I’m okay. I’ve had worse things occur than this in my life but this isn’t the end.

I’m not sure what’s next. Over the next two weeks I’ll find out if I need surgery, but that’s definitely the end of my season.

It’s time to get back to real life, which I did on Tuesday by going out of the village to play with my kids and nephew before returning to the apartment I’m sharing with Dai Greene, the jolly green giant Carl Myerscough and Gareth Warburton.

It’s about working for next year’s World Championships, which will

be even harder than this Olympics. Nelson Evora and Teddy Tamgho will be back and fit, while Taylor will still be firing.

As for the Olympics, I’d love to go to Rio de Janeiro. It will be difficult to stay as a medal contender in four years’ time but I would love to get there and think my Olympic dream isn’t over.