DAEGU, South Korea, Aug 31 (Reuters) – The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) will not be rushed into revising the controversial false-start rule that sent Usain Bolt crashing out of the world championships 100 metres, a top official said on Wednesday.

The one-and-you-are-done rule has been in effect since January 2010 and most elite sprinters do not like it.

But it was not until the lanky Bolt popped out of his blocks ahead of the starter’s gun in Sunday’s 100 metres final did the outcry for change spread to the general public.

“There definitely has been feedback,” IAAF competitions director Paul Hardy said of the mountain of e-mails that have poured into his and other IAAF departments.

“It is big enough that it may be reviewed,” he said. “But remember we are always reviewing our rules.”

The IAAF Council, in extraordinary cases, has the authority to make interim changes to rules.

It meets again on Sunday and while it may discuss the Bolt incident it is unlikely to consider any substantial changes, officials told Reuters.

DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) – A controversial false start rule that sent world record holder Usain Bolt crashing out of the world championships on Sunday drew immediate fire from world 100 metres silver medallist Walter Dix.

The defending champion was ejected from the 100 metres final after false-starting. Athletes who false start are immediately disqualified under a new rule introduced by the world governing body last year.

“That false start (rule) is killing us,” Dix told reporters after finishing second to Jamaican Yohan Blake. “Hopefully it will change by London (2012 Olympics).”

Bolt did not make a protest after his obvious mistake, removing his vest and leaving the track.

“I was shocked,” said Blake, one of the Olympic champion’s Jamaican training partners. “I didn’t expect that of him. I just had to keep my head and get it done for Jamaica.”

Although Blake said he had no problem with the rule, it has drawn the ire of a number of world class sprinters.

Most, including bronze medallist Kim Collins of Saint Kitts and Nevis, want the rule overturned or modified.

DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) – Usain Bolt will not win the 100 meters at the Daegu athletics world championships, according to Maurice Greene, once the world’s fastest man.

Greene, never one to shy away from grabbing headlines, predicted on Saturday that Bolt’s young training mate Yohan Blake would end the world record holder’s reign as world champion.

While injured record holder Tyson Gay stuck with Bolt in a prediction contest, Greene chose Bolt’s fellow Jamaican as his tip for Sunday’s final.

“In championships, stars are born and I think there is going to be a surprise in this championship,” Greene told a packed news conference.”

“(Blake) is crazy enough, mentally tough enough to believe he can go out there and actually win,” Greene said of the 21-year-old who ranks 14th on this year’s 100 meters list.

“I don’t think Blake is fearful of Bolt,” he added.

Greene said he meant no disrespect to Bolt, whose world record is 9.58 seconds, “but he is not the same 9.5 runner that he was. He is allowing himself subject to getting beat. That is why I say someone can come up and take him.”

DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) – Jenn Suhr sharpens her pole vault technique in an icy hut where frost often covers her pole during a New York winter.

That discomfort pales in comparison to the pains the Olympic silver medallist has endured this spring and summer, she told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

An energy-zapping sickness called coeliac disease nearly derailed her world championship plans in June.

“I couldn’t jump,” said Suhr, who on the night before the U.S. world trials convinced herself that by taking muscle relaxers to reduce cramping in her legs she could compete and qualify for the American team for Daegu.

She made it, qualifying a struggling second, but new problems days ago put the trip in doubt again.

Suhr, having overcome the coeliac disease which is caused by a reaction to gluten found in grains such as wheat and barley and feeling great after vaulting a world-leading 4.91 metres, awoke one recent morning with pain in her stomach.

“I thought she was joking at first,” said husband and coach Rick Suhr. “Then she said don’t make me laugh because it hurts. Then I knew we had a problem.”

DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) – Jamaican former world record holder Asafa Powell pulled out of the world championships 100 metres with a groin strain Thursday, spoiling a highly anticipated showdown with current title holder Usain Bolt.

“Asafa is very disappointed to say the least,” his agent Paul Doyle said in a statement. “He was really hoping to be able to run.”

The world bronze medalist had the year’s fastest time, 9.78 seconds, and many were giving him a solid chance of upsetting compatriot Bolt, the Olympic and world champion who has yet to hit top form this season.

Doyle said Powell still hoped to run the 4×100 meters relay.

The 28-year-old injured his groin in Budapest in late July and has experienced recurring tightness and pain ever since.

Powell, who missed the London Diamond League meeting with the injury, made the final decision not to run in Daegu on Thursday, Doyle said.

“He feels he would not be at 100 percent, and may have trouble coming back after each round,” his agent said.

DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) – U.S. sprinter Allyson Felix will receive some last-minute tips from a trailblazer as she launches her bid for a unparalleled 200-400 meters double at the world championships, the three-times world 200 meters champion’s coach said on Thursday.

“Valerie Brisco is coming in,” said Bob Kersee of the first woman to win both events at an Olympics in 1984 at Los Angeles.

“She will walk Allyson through what she did,” Kersee told Reuters in an interview two days before Felix launches her bid.

No woman has accomplished the double at a world championship. Brisco and Frenchwoman Marie-Jose Perec did it at the Olympics with Michael Johnson completing the double at both the Games and world championships.

“I do feel like I’m prepared to handle the workload,” Felix told reporters in Daegu, South Korea.

“Obviously I am in territory that I am not too familiar with,” said the 25-year-old Californian.

“I am definitely a little nervous and a little anxious, but I think that is what happens when you step up to a challenge and do something you are not so comfortable with.”

DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) – Sanya Richards-Ross’s coach’s description of the U.S. 400 metres world champion might not sit well with airport security officials.

“(He) kept saying I was a ticking time bomb,” the Jamaican-born Richards-Ross told a media conference on Thursday ahead of the Daegu world championships. “He didn’t know when I was going to go off, but I was going to go off some time.”

‘The bomb’ finally exploded at London’s Diamond League meeting in early August when, after a so-so season, Richards-Ross ran an eye-catching 49.66 seconds, the year’s second-fastest time.

“I never lost faith,” said the American whose husband Aaron is a cornerback with the New York Giants of the National Football League.

Her turnaround came after a poor race in Birmingham, England and she and coach Clyde Hart, who coached Michael Johnson to the 400 metres world record and both Johnson and Jeremy Wariner to Olympic and world championships, returned to Texas to tweak several parts of her race.

“He shook me up a bit,” Richards-Ross said of the workouts, which included concentrating on the third 100, which “wasn’t going so well”.

“We just worked on how to make that move there.

DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) – Senegal’s Lamine Diack was overwhelmingly re-elected president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) on Wednesday, but vice president Sergei Bubka needed a second vote to retain his position.

Bubka, the retired world pole vault record holder from Ukraine, had finished an out-of-the running fifth in the original vote by the governing body’s congress.

But officials said there had been a technical problem with the voting system and ordered a new vote by hand.

This time Bubka, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) member who is tipped along with 2012 London Olympics leader Sebastian Coe as leading candidates to succeed Diack in 2015, made the top four, picking up 41 votes from the first ballot.

He finished behind American Robert Hersh, Qatar’s Dahlan Al-Hamad and Coe with Canadian Abby Hoffman, the first-vote co-leader with Al-Hamad, fifth.

The delegates also voted a second time for the unopposed Diack, but there was no controversy.

He received 173 yes votes of the 200 ballots cast in the first voting.

DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) – Not even a bizarre case of frostbite will prevent former Olympic and world champion Justin Gatlin from lining up at the world championships, the U.S. sprinter said on Wednesday.

Gatlin, who is in his second year back following a four-year doping suspension, developed the condition recently in steamy Florida of all places, he told a news conference ahead of Saturday’s opening of the world championships.

“There is a cryo (cryotherapy) chamber (where he trains) and I went in there on a hot day and had socks on and the socks were wet from sweat,” Gatlin said.

“I was only in there for two minutes, but for some reason the socks froze to my ankles.”

For a while, “it felt like my feet were on fire…. and it hurt to walk,” Gatlin said of the frostbite.

Now almost fully recovered, Gatlin is preparing for his first world championships since winning the sprint double in Helsinki six years ago but will only compete in the 100 meters and sprint relay in South Korea.

While the American was unable to race following a 2006 positive doping test for the banned steroid testosterone, Jamaican Usain Bolt emerged as the king of sprinting with times Gatlin could only dream of in his pre-suspension days.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – Three-times 200 meters gold medalist Allyson Felix was looking for something special for her fifth consecutive athletics World Championship.

The American sprinter found it by combining her favorite race with an event that long-time coach Bob Kersee mentioned on the first day they sat down for a chat more than six years ago — the 400.

No woman has won both events at a single World Championships but Felix, who has come through a grueling twice-a-day workout schedule at what she jokingly calls “Bobby’s Boot Camp,” will try to do just that at the August 27-September 4 competition in Daegu, South Korea.

“I feel like now is the time to get out of my comfort zone,” Felix told Reuters in an interview. “It is going to be extremely difficult but I am excited to challenge myself.”

The California speedster could have settled for a run at her fourth consecutive 200 world title, a feat that has never been accomplished. But the risk-taking 25-year-old decided the lure of the 200-400 double was too enticing to turn her back on.

“This is a nice change, a nice different challenge in something that is very difficult, and I love a good challenge,” said Felix, who already has the most career world championship gold medals by a female (six).

She can thank Kersee, who has coached multiple Olympic champions including Florence Griffith Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Valerie Brisco-Hooks, for the idea.