RALEIGH, North Carolina, June 19 (Reuters) – Jamaican triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt will not compete in the New Delhi Commonwealth Games from Oct 3-14 because they are too late in the year, coach Glen Mills told Reuters on Saturday.

“It was not part of our schedule,” Mills said via telephone from Jamaica.

Mills said Bolt had known for several months that he would not be going to the Commonwealth Games.

“The time would be when he would be doing his background training for next year’s world championships,” he said.

Bolt has always said he would defer to his coach on whether he would compete in the Games.

The world 100 and 200 metres record holder will also miss next weekend’s national championships.

“He was never down to run the (Jamaican) trials,” Mills said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – World 100 metres silver medallist Tyson Gay did not mince his words as he strolled the streets of New York in near anonymity.

“It is time for Tyson Gay to put up or shut up,” the American sprinter told Reuters.

Casually dressed in a white-and-blue shirt and light-coloured shorts for the walk to a news conference, he had the serious manner of David planning his challenge to Goliath.

For his own peace of mind, the averagely-built Gay needs to somehow find a way to defeat Usain Bolt, the tall and long-striding Jamaican Olympic and world champion who seemingly wins at will.

“Sometimes I get to talking that I can beat him,” Gay said in the interview arranged by organisers of New York’s Adidas Grand Prix. “After a while I have to do it or shut up.

“I never am going to say I can’t beat him because in my heart I believe I can,” the world’s second fastest man said.

Their 100 metres personal bests stand more than a tenth of a second apart, Gay at 9.69 seconds and Bolt owning the world record of 9.58.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – Allen Johnson’s life has always been about overcoming barriers and if the evergreen American has his way, this year will be no different.

“My goal is to run under 13.20 (seconds),” the 1996 Olympic 110 metres hurdles champion told Reuters in a telephone interview. “I don’t think anybody has ever run that fast at my age.”

Few hurdlers, if any, have competed as long on the professional circuit as the 39-year-old.

“My daughter was almost four years old when I won in Atlanta in 1996, now she is graduating high school,” said the four-times world outdoor champion.

“But the hunger is still there,” said Johnson, who came back from ankle surgery in 2008 to rank among the world’s top 40 hurdlers last year with a best of 13.43 seconds.

“I’ve always loved running. Besides you only live one time and when I do stop running it will be over forever. So I am going to make the most of it while I still can.”

If he were to go under 13.20 he would shatter the world record for his nearest age group (13.73), according to www.world-masters-athletics.org.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jamaican triple Olympic and world champion Usain Bolt will return to full training on Monday after two weeks away from the track because of a sore Achilles tendon, according to his agent.

“He has been training but not on the track,” Ricky Simms told Reuters on Thursday.

Last month, a Munich doctor suggested the 100 and 200 metres world record holder rest for two to three weeks as a precautionary move after Bolt’s left Achilles became inflamed.

To stay in shape, the lanky Jamaican had been working in the pool and gym and doing other exercises while resting his Achilles tendon, Simms added.

Bolt withdrew from Saturday’s New York Diamond League meeting because of the problem, but would attend the event to watch club mate Yohan Blake run in the 100 metres, Simms and Blake said.

The world’s fastest man declined to be interviewed after arriving in New York on Thursday.

His next scheduled race is a 200 metres at Lausanne on July 8 and he also had Diamond League meetings scheduled in Paris (100 metres), Zurich (200), Brussels (100) and one yet-to-be announced competition, Simms said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An old back problem is keeping world 100 metres silver medallist Tyson Gay off the track when he should be training and racing, the American said on Thursday.

“The past couple of weeks I have been mentally drained, tired, frustrated because I am hurt almost every year and it is not fun,” Gay said at a news conference for Saturday’s New York Diamond League meeting in which he will not compete.

Gay, who has experienced knee, hamstring and groin injuries in the past, is hampered by a tightness in his right hamstring, he said.

He has not trained for five days but hopes to resume practice on Friday.

“I think it is something coming from my back, something that happened to me years ago with the sciatica nerve that is causing my hamstring to tighten up,” said Gay, who does not expect to compete again until July.

A failure to do speed work in practice before running the world’s fastest time for a 200 metres straightaway in Manchester, England last month may have aggravated the nerve, Gay said.

“It could have shocked my body,” Gay said.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – Former world champion Tyson Gay’s fitness level is likely to keep him out of Saturday’s New York Diamond League meeting, his agent told Reuters on Monday.

“It looks very unlikely he will compete,” Mark Wetmore said in a telephone interview from New York. “There’s a readiness (needed) to run the 100 metres, and he does not have that.”

Gay, the world’s second fastest man, had been expected to challenge Jamaican 100 metres world record holder Usain Bolt at New York, but Bolt withdrew through injury last week.

Wetmore, who is both Gay’s agent and the New York meeting organiser, added his client was not injured, just not in a state of “preparedness” and had also been advised by world renowned Munich sports doctor Hans-Wilhelm Mueller-Wohlfahrt not to run.

Gay looked especially sharp in his early races, setting a lifetime 400 metres best of 44.89 seconds, which made him the first sprinter to break 10 seconds in the 100 metres, 20 seconds in the 200 and 45 seconds in the 400.

He broke another barrier last month, running the fastest 200 metres straightaway in a Manchester, England street race.

“Certainly in Manchester it looked good,” Wetmore said. “But I think it is just a situation where it could be risky for him to run (this weekend). That’s the last thing we want.”

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – China’s out-of-form former Olympic champion Liu Xiang can still be a contender at the 2012 London Games, according to veteran American hurdler Allen Johnson.

“I don’t see why not. It’s still two years away,” Johnson, the 1996 Olympic 110 metres hurdles gold medallist, told Reuters in a telephone interview from his Irmo, South Carolina training base on Wednesday.

“(Liu’s problems) will pass in time, it’s just a matter of working through,” said Johnson, who like Liu underwent tendon surgery in 2008.

“A surgery like that, you are going to be 90 per cent (recovered) within the first couple of months. But to get back to where you were before, it’s going to take a good two years,” said the 39-year-old Johnson.

“I am still recovering. My (left) ankle probably will never be 100 per cent,” said the four-time world outdoor champion. “I limp every morning when I wake up.

“If he (Liu) is going through anything like what I went going through, I’m not surprised he has having some residual issues. “

Liu, forced out of the 2008 Beijing Olympics by an Achilles injury, has seldom been at top form since his surgery.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – The IAAF plans to cut more than $20 million in expenses the next three years, including $4 million in 2010, to weather the global financial crisis, a senior athletics source said on Friday.

Cuts would come from all areas of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) with the organisation also hoping to benefit from an improved exchange rate between the dollar and the euro.

The IAAF’s executive board heard the proposals at a meeting in Monaco on Friday. The recommendations must be approved by the IAAF Council at its next session in Kiev in August.

The proposals and more than $35 million in Olympic revenue sharing from the 2012 Games would help the organisation achieve balanced income/expenditure for 2010-12 while maintaining a capital reserve of at last one year’s operating budget, the source said.

Income for the period will be approximately $204 million with expenditures of about $203 million.

The organisation had expenses of $65 million in 2009 and had proposed spending $56 million this year before the cuts, the senior official said.

Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper reported in March the IAAF faced bankruptcy unless it cut costs and several European officials also have expressed concerns about the governing body.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – Olympic champion and world 5,000 and 10,000 metres record holder Kenenisa Bekele has a ruptured calf muscle that threatens his outdoor season, the Ethiopian’s manager told Reuters on Thursday.

“It is clear he needs four, but probably more … six weeks rest, then start training, so basically you can consider the season is over,” Jos Hermens said in a telephone interview from the Netherlands.

“There is a little chance for August (return),” Hermens said. “Personally I don’t think so, but I know he still hopes to.”

Bekele ruptured the muscle while training on a hard track in Ethiopia in February, Hermens said.

The 27-year-old was preparing for the indoor season at the time and has not competed since then. He had been scheduled to be one of the top athletes on the new Diamond League circuit.

Doctors in the Netherlands diagnosed the problem on Thursday after a series of scans and examinations.

“It is very clear that it was a rupture,” Hermens said.