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[av_heading heading=’Usain Bolt, Mo Farah headline World Championships 2017′ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”][/av_heading]
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LONDON – Jamaican sprint great Usain Bolt and British distance legend Mo Farah will attempt to sign off with gold at the World Championships which begins here today.
The pair, who have 28 world and Olympic titles between them, will both retire from the track by the end of the season.
With Bolt not defending his 200m title, 400m world record holder Wayde van Niekerk will attempt to double up and establish himself as one of the new figureheads for the sport.
The Championships begin five years to the day since Great Britain won three Olympic gold medals in less than an hour on “Super Saturday” at the same venue.
Bolt originally intended to retire in the wake of Rio 2016. However, he reconsidered that plan after his sponsor suggested a London farewell a year later instead.
Now 30, the Jamaican had a slow start to the season, dipping under 10 seconds for the first time in Monaco a fortnight ago.
He is only the joint-seventh fastest man over 100m in 2017, but has a history of rising to the big occasion.
Only once in seven major 100m finals has Bolt failed to win gold, and that was after a false start at the World Championships in Daegu in 2011 took him out of the race.
Twenty-one-year-old American Christian Coleman – who ran a world-leading 9.82 in June – a 35-year-old Justin Gatlin and 2011 world champion Yohan Blake may be Bolt’s biggest rivals for gold in the final.
Bolt’s final race before retirement is likely to be the 4x100m relay final seven days later.
Meanwhile, Farah’s 5,000m and 10,000m double was one of the defining memories of the London Olympics five years ago.
Since then the 34-year-old has repeated the feat at World Championships in Moscow and Beijing as well as last summer’s Rio Olympics, and is favorite to do so once again before shifting his focus to marathon.
However he is facing a crop of young pretenders with Ethiopian teenager Abadi Hadis the fastest this year over 10,000m and 23-year-old compatriot Muktar Edris leading the 5,000m time charts.
Farah’s preparations have been at times sidetracked by questions over training methods however.
Computer hackers released documents in July that showed Farah’s blood tests initially raised suspicion before later being cleared. His coach Alberto Salazar is under investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency, while UK Athletics staff may have failed to properly record infusions of a controversial supplement given to Farah.
Both Farah, who has refused to speak to newspaper journalists going into the championships, and Salazar have denied any wrongdoing. (BBC)
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