Britney Spears said Thursday she was only joking when she claimed to have set a new world record for the 100-metre dash.
A day earlier, Spears boasted on Instagram that she did the sprint in 5.97 seconds. “Ran my first 5 !!!! Getting over your fear of pushing it in the beginning is key,” she wrote in a post she later deleted. “Once I did that I hit 5 !!!!! Usually I run 6 or 7 …. my first try was 9 …. And now I did it whoop !!!!! 100 meter dash.”
The current world record for the 100 metres is held by Usain Bolt, who did it in 9.58 seconds in 2009.
Social media was quick to jump on the "Toxic" singer. "Britney Spears claiming to have broken the 100m world record by nearly four seconds is my favourite self-isolation content of the week so far," read one tweet. Another person wrote on Twitter: "Quite frankly devastated that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have been postponed as I really wanted to see Britney Spears run a sub 6 second 100m! F**k you Coronovirus (sic) for ruining the spectacle & her chance at GREATNESS!"
On Thursday, in the caption of an Instagram post about trying on dresses, Spears wrote: “PS …. obviously I was joking about running the 100 meter dash in 5.97 seconds …. the world record is held by Usain Bolt which is 9.58 seconds …. but you better believe I’m coming for the world record.”
She added the hashtags “#joking” and “#workbitch.”