Bolt's season farewell

Jamaican sprint king Usain Bolt (L) gets on marks with a pupil in Thessaloniki on Friday. Bolt will participate in the World Athletics Final in Greece and this will be his last appearance of a memorable year.Photo: AFP

Jamaican sprint phenomenon Usain Bolt will line up in the 200m during the World Athletics Final on Saturday and Sunday for what will be his last appearance of a memorable 2009.
The triple world and Olympic champion and world record holder in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay had been scheduled to compete in Shangahi on September 20 and in Daegu, South Korea, five days later.
But he confirmed on Friday that would travel neither to China nor South Korea due to "fatigue".
"I have been suffering from fatigue from as early as the Zurich meet and after careful discussions with my coach and management team, even with medical advice, we felt it necessary to close the season," Bolt said in a statement.
In Greece Bolt will be competing in his ninth 200m competition of the year. His season also featured fifteen 100m, a 150m exhibition race on the streets of Manchester, a number of 4x100m relays, including the World Championship final, and even the 400m in individual and relay form at the very start of the season.
Fatigued or not, Bolt, who has improved his world records in both the 100m (9.58sec) and 200m (19.19), has produced stellar performances on cue whenever needed, even when the conditions were against him.
The Greek public can therefore expect another high-octane performance from the star of last year's Beijing Olympics, whose last performance in the 200m saw him register a time of 19.57 - the fourth quickest in history - despite mild temperatures in Brussels last week.
'Lightning Bolt' will not be the only familiar face on show in Salonika, however, with no less than 28 recently crowned world champions also making the trip.
Ethiopa's Kenenisa Bekele, winner of the 5,000m and 10,000m, America's Sanya Richards (400m) and Russian pole-vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, who shared one million dollars (700,000 euros) by remaining unbeaten in the Golden League series, will all be looking to swell their bank accounts even further.
World athletics governing body the IAAF has put up three million dollars (nearly two million euros) of prize money for the 36 weekend events, with 30,000 dollars going to the winners of each competition and 2,000 dollars to the finalists.
Croatia's Blanka Vlasic will once again attempt to beat Bulgarian Stefka Kostadinova's 1987 world record of 2.09m in the women's high jump, having failed to do so by a centimetre in Zagreb at the end of August.
Isinbayeva is another budding record-breaker, as she seeks to add to the 5.06m mark she set in Zurich on August 28.