Powell Up To Speed On Art

BRUSSELS, Aug 24, 2006 - Briefs from Brussels Golden League meeting on Thursday:

Powell up to speed with art
RUSSELS - Jamaica’s 100 metres world record holder Asafa Powell is collecting art as fast as he is running these days. The 23-year-old is busy filling up his new house in Jamaica with works of art and on Wednesday paid 5,000 euros for the original painting of the poster promoting the meeting. The subject matter? Why sprinting of course. It was all in a good cause as it was for an AIDS project in Namibia.

Getting to the wedding on time slowed down Bekele senior
BRUSSELS - Ethiopian running legend Kenenisa Bekele is still in line for a share of 500,000 dollars for winning five of the Golden League 5,000 metres races. However, the Olympic 10,000 metres champion, world recordholder in the event and the 5000m, revealed why he had failed to win in the first one of the series in Oslo - his sister’s wedding. ``After the world cross country championships I took time off to organise my sister’s wedding which meant I returned to training later than usual. So I was not ready for Oslo,’’ he explained. The occasion must have been especially poignant for Bekele senior - whose younger brother Tariku runs here as well having recently been crowned the world junior champion - as his fiancee died last year of a heart attack while out on a training run with him.

Nostalgia rules for former Belgian heroes at meeting
BRUSSELS - The Belgian hosts will pay tribute to its stars of the past here on Friday, said meet organiser Wilfred Meert. It's the 100th anniversary of the Belgian Olympic Committee so instead of the usual parade in cars of the stars appearing prior to the opening ceremony we have the 500 surviving Belgian Olympians parading round the track. Jacques Rogge (president of the IOC) will give the keynote address for the opening of the meeting.’’ The rarely-run 4x800m is also on the cards. It's 50 years since Belgium broke that world record (in a smaller stadium in Brussels) and so to celebrate that we put it onto the card,'' said Meert. Three of the quartet will be here (the other one died last year). There is a very good chance looking at the Kenyan and Qatari teams (they are all Kenyan-born as well) that the world mark of 7min 03.89sec set by Great Britain (which included greats Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram) will be broken.’’