Bolt opens European season, eye on biggest prize

Usain Bolt will open his European track season in the Czech Republic today full of confidence, in top shape and eyeing the ultimate prize – more Olympic medals.

The talk in athletics in any Olympic year is of the revered Games themselves, when track and field take centre stage at the world’s largest sporting event.

Bolt revolutionised sprinting, and indeed athletics, four years ago in Beijing, setting world records when winning the 100 and 200m titles, and also starring in a record-breaking Jamaican quartet in the 4x100m.

The 25-year-old left Beijing as one of the most recognisable figures in world sport, going on to beat both his individual sprint marks with new times (9.58 and 19.19sec) in the Berlin worlds in 2009.

He takes to the track in Ostrava for the sixth time today, seemingly brimming with confidence that he will be unbeatable come the London Games (and before) given his recent injury-free run and impressive form.

“I’m definitely on the good path, the right track. I’ve been injury free and I’m looking to doing extremely well at the Olympics,” Bolt said.

The Jamaican will be up against, among others, Dwain Chambers, the Briton having served a drugs ban and now cleared to race in the Olympics after the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS) overturned a British Olympic Association bylaw that banned doping cheats for life.

“For me, rules are rules,” said Bolt, a one-time training partner of Chambers, albeit for a very short period.

“If the rules say it’s okay for him to compete, who am I to say otherwise?”