Blake dodges Bolt’s 200m challenge

Yohan Blake will not go head-to-head with Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt over 200m at this year’s World Championships. Blake has pulled out of this weekend’s Jamaican trials with fitness problems following a hamstring injury he suffered in April.

It means he will focus on defending his world 100m title in Moscow in August having already booked his place as the 2011 champion. He took gold in South Korea when training partner Bolt famously false-started in the 100m final.

Blake took Olympic 100m and 200m silver behind Bolt at London 2012 and had been seen as the biggest threat to the world’s fastest man over the longer distance this summer.

But his manager Cubie Seegobin admitted yesterday: “Yohan’s coach is not satisfied with the progress of his injury and hence his level of fitness will not allow him to compete at the trials this time.

“We will continue to assess the situation and re-evaluate as we approach the World Championships.”

Blake has run the second-fastest ever time in the 200m, clocking 19.26 seconds, just behind Bolt’s world record of 19.19secs that the six-time Olympic champion set at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.

Blake has only returned to competition in the last two weeks and ran a pedestrian 20.72secs for the longer distance at a low-key meeting in the Jamaican capital Kingston.

Source: The Sun