Powell and Bekele start Golden League chase

LONDON, June 1 (Reuters) Asafa Powell and Kenenisa Bekele inject speed and stamina respectively to the start of the quest for the Golden League million dollar jackpot in Oslo tomorrow.

The Bislett Games is the first of the six Golden League meetings which will be followed by the World Athletics Final in Stuttgart on Sept. 9-10.

With no global championships scheduled for 2006, Powell and Bekele can concentrate on the Golden League and the chance to lift a cheque for one million dollars in Berlin on Sept. 3.

An outright winner of one of the 11 designated Golden League events at each of the six meetings will collect the jackpot while two or more will share it.

This year for the first time, in recognition of the difficulty of winning six events in a row, athletes who win five races will share a purse of 500,000 dollars.

Jamaican Powell set theworld 100 metres record of 9.77 in Athens last year before injury prevented him from challenging American Olympic champion Justin Gatlin at the Helsinki world championships.

Gatlin, who completed the 100-200 double in Helsinki, thought along with the rest of the world that he had reclaimed the world record for the United States with a time of 9.76 in Doha last month.

RECORD SHARED However, due to a timing error the world ruling body adjusted Gatlin's time by a hundredth of a second and he now shares the record with Powell.

''I'm still the fastest man, no doubt,'' Powell told Reuters.

''Everybody wanted to beat me. Now that he has equalled the record people will go after him also, so the spotlight is off me.'' Tomorrow's field includes Gatlin's training partner and Olympic 200 metres champion Shawn Crawford and Nigerian Olusoji Fasuba, who set an African record of 9.95 behind Gatlin in Doha.

Bekele, the men's world athlete of the year in 2005, became this year the first man in history to complete victory at a world championship on three different surfaces.

The Olympic and world 10,000 metres champion on the track took the gold medal over 3,000 metres at the world indoor championships in Moscow this year before winning his fifth long and short course ouble at the world cross country championships in Fukuoka.

''With no individual global championships to aim at in 2006, my focus is the Golden League this summer and I am looking forward to challenging for the one million dollar prize,'' Bekele told the International Association of Athletics Associations.

REUTERS AY VC957