23 Aug 2012

No more Bolt-Blake duels this season

5:58 am on 23 August 2012

The six-time Olympic champion Usain Bolt and his young Jamaican compatriot Yohan Blake will not race each other again this season, according to Blake's manager.

Bolt, who defended his 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay titles in London, is due to contest the 200m in Friday's Diamond League meeting in Lausanne, while Blake, who won silver in both individual sprints, will run in the 100m.

The training partners will race over those same distances in the next meeting in Zurich at the end of the month, before swapping for the Brussels event in September.

Meanwhile there has been talk of both men playing cricket in Australia's Twenty20 Big Bash League after Bolt expressed an interest in turning out for Melbourne Stars and the Sydney Sixers said they hoped to lure Blake.

Bolt played junior cricket before turning to the track, while Blake describes himself as a "bowling machine" in the finest tradition of West Indian fast bowlers.