Rested star Bolt heads to Zurich

Bolt's coach expects him to break 9.5 seconds over 100m

Triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt will race for the first time since taking the Beijing Games by storm at the Zurich Grand Prix on Friday.

Jamaican Bolt, 22, claimed gold in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay, recording world record times in each race.

"I've had some sleep since I've been here so I'm not tired," he said. "I'm trying to get my blood pumping again."

Yelena Isinbayeva, Dayron Robles and Kenenisa Bekele are among 12 Olympic champions who will compete in Zurich.

But centre stage will be Jamaican Bolt, whose coach Glen Mills believes could have run closer to 9.5 seconds on his way to the Olympic 100m title, when he clocked a world record 9.69 secs despite celebrating before crossing the line.

"If he had continued running, the slowest he would have run would have been 9.52," said Mills.

I'm just trying to get to the end of the season and to go home and enjoy myself Usain Bolt

"In two more years he should be peaking at this distance and by then I am certain he will be down to there."

But Bolt struck a more cautious note ahead of his first opportunity to break his own 100m world record.

"I'm just trying to get to the end of the season, injury-free, and go home and enjoy myself."

Bolt's sprint compatriot Asafa Powell, who runs in Gateshead on Sunday, will missing from the 100m final - but the Golden League Grand Prix is packed with other Olympic stars.

In winning both the 5000m and 10000m Olympic titles in Beijing, both in Olympic record times, Bekele became the first athlete to achieve the feat since fellow Ethiopian Miruts Yifter 28 years ago in Moscow.

Bekele says that chasing his four-year-old 5000m world record does not figure in his plans for Zurich because of tiredness.

He and other Ethiopian medallists celebrated with more than a million fans in the country's capital of Addis Ababa on Wednesday.

"It's very different," said Bekele. "I don't think about world records. After Beijing I'm too tired for a fast race. Maybe I will just go for winning."

But teenager Pamela Jelimo, the 800m Beijing gold medallist, is planning to try and break Jarmila Kratochvilova's 25-year-old world record of one minute 53.28 seconds.

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"I'm going to try for the world record here, I'm not feeling tired after the Olympics," she said.

Cuba's Olympic 110m hurdles champion, Dayron Robles, also insisting he is in top shape, could make an attack on the world record of 12.87 secs he achieved in mid-June.

The meeting will also offer the sell-out crowd something the Olympic Games could not quite manage when Jamaica take on the United States in the 4x100m.

The US failed to qualify for the final in Beijing after they dropped the baton in qualifying.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/athletics/7584685.stm