By Mike Rowbottom

April 23 - Usain Bolt (pictured) may still compete at this year’s Commonwealth Games in New Delhi despite recent reports suggesting he will not take part.



Asked if he would be at the event which gets underway in India on October 3, the world 100 and 200 metres champion said today that the decision lay in the hands of his coach, Glen Mills.

"My coach decides that," he said as he prepared to compete in this weekend’s Penn relays in the United States.

"He hasn’t told me, so I’m not sure about that."

In December the chairman of the Delhi 2010 local organising committee, Suresh Kalmadi, claimed that Bolt would definitely be running in the Commonwealth Games, only to be put right by Bolt’s agent, who said no decision had been made on the matter.

Last month, the agent representing Bolt’s fellow Jamaican and Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown said that she would not be going to the Commonwealth Games as it did not fit into her schedule.

Bolt, however, remains a tantalising possibility for the Commonwealth organisers.

His first competitive outing this season will be at the Jamaican International Invitational Games in Kingston on May 1, a meeting which has gained a new entrant this week in the form of Bolt’s sprint rival Tyson Gay, who has entered the 400m after posting the fourth fastest time of the year this year, 44.89sec, at a meeting in Florida last weekend.

Bolt, who ran the 400m in 47.33 as a 15-year-old, remains ambivalent about competing over the full lap.

"I try to avoid the 400," he said today.

"I don’t want to do it, because the training for it is so hard.

"Seeing Tyson Gay break 45 seconds is not a motivation for me.

"But if I have to do it, I have to do it.

"If it takes that for me to become a legend in the sport, I will do it."

Asked what would be left for him to achieve if he did not move up to the 400m, having won Olympic and world titles at 100 and 200m in world record times, Bolt responded: "I definitely want to defend my titles.

"That is really important.

"If I can dominate for four, five, six years then I can make myself a legend in the sport."

After racing in the United States and Jamaica, Bolt will take part in the second of the International Association of Athletics Federation’s Diamond League events in Shanghai next month.

He is also scheduled to do Diamond League meetings in New York, on the track where he first broke the 100m world record, Paris, and Brussels, where he is due to meet his two principal rivals, Gay and former world 100m record holder Asafa Powell.

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