Olympic sprinter Tre Houston is exploring a route into the NFL after trying out with the Kansas City Chiefs yesterday.

Houston, who ran the 200 metres at this summer’s Rio de Janeiro Games, said that he is serious about forging a career in American football and spent the past seven weeks training twice a day in preparation for his trial.

Despite not making the cut at the Chiefs, Houston insists that he has not been deterred from chasing a contract and believes he possesses the transferable skills to play as a wide receiver or a punt-return specialist.

“It was one of the best experiences of my life — on the same level as competing at the Olympics,” the 26-year-old said. “It wasn’t a combine, it was an actual tryout for the team and it was mind-blowing from beginning to end. It was certainly something I will never forget.

“My agent feels confident I will be able to do something. There are 32 teams out there and I really feel one of them will give me a shot.”

A tweet yesterday from Adam Schefter, an NFL insider for ESPN, is understood to have alerted other teams about Houston’s NFL aspirations, with the 26-year-old being invited to a similar workout with the New York Jets next week.

“[The Chiefs] were impressed with my speed and acceleration and told me they can teach me everything other than how to run fast,” said Houston, who finished sixth in his heat at the Olympics in a time of 20.85sec.

“A lot of the guys today had better fundamentals than me because they have been playing football their whole lives. I’m definitely not frightened to learn something new and I just need more time.”

Houston had not previously harboured any hankerings for the NFL until a cousin asked him whether he would be interested in trying his hand at American football.

“I’d never really thought about it before,” Houston added. “I mean, people had previously asked me, ‘Why don’t you try out?’ But it wasn’t until my cousin hooked me up with a guy involved with the NFL that things started moving fast.”

Houston, who also represented Bermuda at the Pan American Games in Toronto in 2015 and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014 and Delhi in 2010, will continue to train as a sprinter while he pursues his NFL ambitions.

“This wasn’t my dream, my dream was compete in the Olympics,” Houston said. “But now this is forming and starting to actually happen, would I like this to happen? Hell yeah!

“I’m still going to be training for track; that’s a no-brainer — it’s my bread and butter.”

Houston joins a long list of sprinters to have had NFL tryouts. Justin Gatlin, of the United States — who won the 100 at the 2004 Olympics — trained with the Houston Texans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers about ten years ago.

Former NFL players to have had decorated track careers include “Bullet” Bob Hayes, a Super Bowl-winning wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, who won two gold medals for the United States at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.

Meanwhile, Renaldo Nehemiah was the world’s best hurdler in the late 1970s and early Eighties before playing three seasons at the San Francisco 49ers, winning the Super Bowl in 1984.