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BOLT SHUTS DOWN for 2014

Citing the need to get more rest and to fulfill sponsors' obligations, multiple Olympic and World champion, Usain Bolt has ended his already truncated season, one race short.

Organisers of the of the Weltklasse Zurich meeting, where the 28-year-old Bolt was to have competed on Thursday, announced that the 2013 triple World champion was withdrawing from the meet and ending his season.

"As has been widely reported, Usain Bolt's background training this year was disrupted by injury. His coach, Glen Mills, is satisfied with his performances in the three competitions he took part in, but feels it is now time to shut it down, while he is healthy and injury free with a view on his preparations for the 2015 season. He will now take a period of rest, do some sponsor activities and then resume training in October," the statement from the meet organisers said.

Bolt raced at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial in Warsaw last Saturday and ran a season-best 9.98 seconds, which is an unofficial indoor record. The roof of the stadium was closed to accommodate Bolt, who had hinted that it would have given him an opportunity to break track legend's Frankie Fredericks unofficial indoor record of 10.05s set in 1996.

"I've never run indoors, I was always too tall," Bolt joked at a news conference last Wednesday. "When I heard there was going to be a roof, I was looking forward to that. If they treat it as an indoor world record it'll be good for me. It's always good to have more records."

More rest

Having set that record, the decision was taken to end the season early. It was decision with which Zurich meet director Patrick Magyar could empathise.

"Usain's body has delivered tremendous performances over the last years, but, it is a body not a machine," he said. "If an athlete at that level and his coach feel more rest is needed, we are certainly not going to question this and fully support the decision."

Bolt effectively opened his season on August 1 and 2 in Glasgow, Scotland, where he ran anchor on Jamaica's sprint relay team that won gold at the Commonwealth Games. Bolt's first individual race was run on a specially mounted four-lane track in Rio in Brazil. There he ran 10.06s to beat Mark Lewis-Francis and his friend Wallace Spearmon.

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