Usain Bolt to get £500,000 for London Olympics re-run

Usain Bolt

Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford will also star, but Oscar Pistorius is banned

LAST UPDATED AT 12:40 ON Wed 17 Apr 2013

JAMAICAN sprinter Usain Bolt will top the bill at a special athletics meeting at London's Olympic Stadium this summer on the anniversary of the Games' opening ceremony last year.

Bolt, who won three events at the London Games, will be joined by other athletics stars including Britain's Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Greg Rutherford, who lit up the stadium as they won golds within an hour of each other on 'Super Saturday' last August.

They will be among 12 Olympic champions confirmed for the three-day Diamond League event, also dubbed the London Anniversary Games, which will begin on Friday 26 July.

Bolt will compete in the 100m on the first evening and in the 4x100m the following day. Heptathlon champion Ennis will compete in the 100m hurdles and long jump, Farah is set to drop down a distance or two and run the 3,000m while Rutherford will take on the long jump.

But while the athletes competed for glory and medals in the Olympics there will be a rather different motivation this summer, notes The Times. Bolt will be paid £500,000 for "less than 20 seconds' work" at the event.

"Bolt has snubbed Britain in recent years, because of punitive laws that would have taxed him on his global income, but they have been changed and he is free for a massive windfall," explains the paper. "It means he will be getting around five times more than British stars like Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis."

The third day of the event will be dedicated to Paralympic events, with stars like sprinter Jonnie Peacock competing. However, wheelchair racer David Weir is unlikely to be there and Oscar Pistorius will not be welcome at the event.

UK Athletics told the BBC that the presence of the South African 'Blade Runner', who is facing a murder charge after shooting dead his girlfriend earlier this year, would turn the event into a "media circus". · 
