Bolt runs with goal of top football
USAIN Bolt says he is serious about starting a soccer career now he has retired from sprinting – and believes he could even play for Jamaica.
The 31- year- old eight- time Olympic gold medallist, currently recovering from a hamstring injury, accepted there may be scepticism but said it had been his boyhood dream.
“For me it’s a personal goal. I don’t care what people really think about it. I’m not going to lie to myself. I’m not going to be stupid,” the Jamaican said.
Bolt ( right) was speaking before world champion Lewis Hamilton drove him around the Circuit of the Americas in a Mercedes AMG sportscar.
“If I feel I can’t do it, I’m going to say ‘ you know what, forget this’. I’m not trying to embarrass myself,” he said.
“But if I go out there and feel I can do this then I will give it a try. It’s a dream.” ASH Barty yesterday reached the world’s top 20 and became A Australia’s top- ranked woman.
The two career firsts for the Queenslander, both confirmed in the latest WTA rankings, emphasised how far she has come in a 2017 season that she started as world No. 271.
Barty rose three places in the singles rankings to No. 20 despite not having played last week, with Daria Gavrilova slipping behind her to No. 25 due to a second- round loss to Czech Kristyna Pliskova in the WTA Moscow tournament.
Gavrilova was runner- up at the Kremlin Cup last year.
Barty and Casey Dellacqua are one of eight doubles teams at this week’s WTA championships in Singapore, which starts on Thursday and also next week’s WTA Elite Trophy singles event in Zhuhai, China.
Barty has qualified for one of the 12 singles spots, which in- vites the best singles players of the year not engaged in singles in the WTA championships.
The Queenslander was this month named among the nominees for the WTA comeback player of the year award, in the company of Americans Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys and Czech Petra Kvitova.
Stephens’s return from injury to win the US Open makes her the likely winner.
PAUL MALONE