Bolt will find it difficult to participate in CWGG: O'Brien

The fastest man on earth Usain Bolt will find it difficult to represent Jamaica in this year's Commonwealth Games, former American decathlete Dan O'Brien said. ''My advice is irrelevant but it's going to be a tough push for Bolt to run in the Commonwealth Games. He has taken part in the world championship followed by the Olympics and again the world championship. To do it year after year is difficult,'' the 1996 Olympic decathlon champion said here today. The three-time world decathlon champion, here as the event ambassador for this Sunday's seventh Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon, said for the US athletes 2010 is a lean year but he would not be surprised if Bolt skips the Commonwealth Games to be held in October in Delhi. ''This is a Down Year for the US athletes.

He (Bolt) has had a heavy schedule and I can understand (if he skips CWG) his pushing forward for London (venue of 2012 Olympic Games),'' the one-time world champion of the gruelling ten-event athletic discipline said. The 44-year-old Oregon-born athlete, who clinched back-to-back world championship title in 1991, 1993 and 1995 before clinching the gold at the Atlanta Games, also hailed Bolt as someone who has the ability to transcend his sport. ''Bolt is great for the sport. He has the ability to transcend track and field like Tiger Woods has transcended golf and Michael Phelps has been able to do in swimming,'' O'Brien said. But the former world champion, who idolised British decathlon great Daley Thompson and US heptathlon legend Jackie Joyner Kersee, did not think much of Bolt's publicised plans to take up to 400-metre racing in future.

''Every great sprinter says he's going to move up (in the distance). But it's going to be hard for him to step up to the 400m which is not a cakewalk. To do it four or five times in a season is difficult,'' he said. O'Brien also ridiculed tennis champion Serena Williams's reluctance to undergo regular drug testing and said such tests in athletics has helped in improving the sport's image. ''It's ridiculous when someone like Serena Williams who earns 15 million dollars a year says it's inconvenient to give a drug sample.

In my career I used to be tested once a month and not once after I retired,'' he said. ''As far as I'm concerned I have a zero tolerance for performance-enhancing drugs and my coaches would have refused to train me had I been on drugs,'' the former athlete said.