Jeremiah Azu struggled to find the words for his disappointment as he became the latest British sprinter to false start at the Olympics.

Three years ago Zharnel Hughes made the same mistake in Tokyo,  after becoming the first British male to make the blue-riband 100m final in 21 years.

Azu was drawn in the first heat and needed to finish in the top three to advance to Sunday's semi-finals.

Progress should have been straightforward for the 23-year-old Cardiff Harrier, who ran a 9.97 second personal best in Germany earlier this summer - the first Welshman to go sub ten seconds.

But in front of a capacity and rocking 80,000 crowd at the Stade de France, he claimed a noise in the stands meant he left the blocks early.

The British team protested the decision in the hope he could run a time trial qualifier but it was dismissed by World Athletics officials within the hour.

"I'm feeling great, so it's a shame," said Azu, a two-time British champion at his first Olympics.

"There's a lot of crowd noise, the pole vault is going on. I reacted to a sound and they're saying I can't run under protest. "It's an Olympic crowd, they are all so excited, I don't fault them but we are on the start line, someone has reacted to something and it's set me off.

"I asked if I could run under protest but they told me to leave the track and put in an appeal. I don't think I've really taken it in."

Azu will be back for the 4x100m relay later in the Games while team-mate Louie Hinchliffe showed no signs of big name nerves, preferring to take down big names instead on his Games debut.

Hinchliffe lowered the colours of 100m world champion and Olympic favourite Noah Lyles as he clocked the third quickest time of his career.

Hinchliffe - who will be joined in the semi-final by British team-mate Zharnel Hughes - is coached at the University of Houston by nine-time Olympic champion Carl Lewis and clocked a 9.95 seconds personal best at the NCAA Championships earlier this year.

His first round time of 9.98 seconds was just three hundredths slower but, aided by the super-quick purple track in Paris, he knows he may have to go quicker.

"It was good to get him back after London, it was a good feeling," he said, after beating Lyles to the line.

"I wasn’t really thinking too much about him, he wasn’t really near me, so I wasn’t really thinking too much about who was in the race.

"I think the pressure and environment will bring more out of me, trying to get to an Olympic final.

"I’m just running my races at the moment, I’m not really thinking too much about results, I don’t really want to chase results.

"The atmosphere is amazing. I think that environment brings the best out of all of us. You have to make the most of it, use it to your advantage.

"My coach told me to run my own race, don’t try to get distracted by it all, just focus on me."

Lyles was first to congratulate Hinchliffe - but insists it won't be happening again.

"He’s a talented kid, he ran well in the NCAA so I knew he was going to run well, he had it in him," he said.

"I was expecting they would just fall in line. They didn’t, they took it as a chance of having one shot and taking it. To be honest, I should have expected that knowing it was the Olympics. But this is my first time in an Olympic 100m, that’s on me, but I won’t let that happen again."

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