Brussels, Belgium - The Belgacom Memorial Van Damme, the finale of the ÅF Golden League 2008, takes place in the Belgian capital on Friday 5 September 2008. The meeting will focus on Beijing achievements, a notable retirement, and of course the last stage of the ÅF Golden League $1 Million Jackpot.

A capacity audience of 47,000 spectators in the King Baudouin Stadium will salute the Olympic achievements of three-time Beijing sprint champion and World record breaker Usain Bolt of Jamaica, and of their home Olympic stars, High Jump gold medallist Tia Hellebaut, and Kim Gevaert who anchored the Belgian women’s 4x100m relay team to silver. The adoration will be tinged with sadness as, Gevaert, the double European sprint champion will retire at the end of this meeting.

There will be nothing retiring about the final attempts of two athletes to secure the $1 Million Jackpot. Just Kenyan Pamela Jelimo (800m) and Croatian Blanka Vlasic (High Jump) remain in the hunt. Success comes down to one thing, victory. Defeat and their previous five series meet successes count for nothing. No one ever said the Jackpot was an easy quest.

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One more victory to secure $1 Million - ÅF Golden League

Beijing Bolt to end season

Usain Bolt is of course the international headline attraction. He runs the men’s 100m against former World record holder Asafa Powell. Powell is in the form of his life having run a 9.72 PB on Tuesday in Lausanne.

World champion Tyson Gay was to run but in the last hour (19:45hrs, 4 Sep) has informed the meeting organisers that he will NOT run tomorrow, as he has not yet fully recovered from his hamstring injury, and does not want to risk further injury in the possibly cold and wet conditions.

Perhaps the greatest opponent for all the sprinters will be the weather. Light rain and temperatures of around 15C are forecast.

Bolt has repeated he has one aim for the post-Beijing period and that is to end the year healthy. Brussels is, we are told, his last race of the season, and we can guess in such weather conditions no one will want to push to the limits.

It's Powell’s race to lose then, considering he ran 9.87 last Sunday (31 Aug) in torrential rain in Gateshead but no one, least of all Powell is going to want to consider him the favourite for tomorrow night’s dash. Prediction – Bolt by a whisker from Powell, and with the likes of Churandy Martina, Marc Burns and Nesta Carter also in the race, third is wide open.

Sell-out crowd…yet again

This is the twelfth consecutive year that the Memorial Van Damme meeting’s 47,000 seats have been sold out. As reported by Meeting Director Wilfried Meert they are in the luxurious position that the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since 17 August when the last tickets were sold. Currently, he advised, tickets are being sold on Ebay for 200 euros each which “is like Formula One prices here in Belgium.”

Meert was quite clear, aside from the celebrations about the home success in Beijing, that “Bolt has awakened something in our sport. People who for years have only followed our sport at Olympic Games and major championships are now once again interested in athletics outside those competitions.”

A quick run through the three hour programme

Aside the 100m, the Jackpot quest, and the farewell to Gevaert, there is much else to look forward to during an evening which will be capped by a concert – 80’s pop icons ‘Kid Creole and the Coconuts’ – and a fireworks display.

It’s a family affair

The men’s 400m and women’s 200m, are respectively headed internationally by Olympic silver and bronze medallists Jeremy Wariner of USA and Kerron Stewart of Jamaica. However, the home crowd will be concentrating on just one name in these races. Twin brothers Kevin and Jonathan Borlee and their sister Olivia, all competed for Belgium in Beijing. Kevin smashed the national 400m record with a 44.88 run in the Olympic semi-final and with his brother made up 50% of the Olympic fifth place finishing national 4x400m relay quartet, while their sister took silver as part of the Belgian 4x100m sprint squad.

Hellebaut to spoil Vlasic’s party?

With Tia Hellebaut hopefully having recovered some energy after all the national celebrations surrounding her Beijing victory, hers was the first ever Olympic track and field gold in history for a Belgian woman, the crowd will have more than just Blanka Vlasic’s bid for the $1 Million to interest them in the High Jump. Will Hellebaut’s home coming meet end up being the spoiler of the Croatian’s season long fight for the Jackpot? Anna Chicherova of Russia, the bronze medallist in Beijing behind these two, is also in the fight tomorrow.

Kim Gevaert’s career finale will not be quite so intense. None of the Jamaicans who took the medal sweep in Beijing will race the women’s 100m. Gevaert never made the individual final in Beijing and with Britain’s Jeanette Kwakye and the Bahamas’ Debbie Ferguson-McKenzie, who finished seventh and eighth, in the field, this will be no easy ‘goodbye’ for the European 100m and 200m champion in front of her home crowd.

As certain, as certain can be in sport

There is not much that is ever certain in sport, which is much of its beauty. Yet if you were to throw some money around before the start of competition, odds on Yelena Isinbayeva in the Pole Vault and Andreas Thorkildsen in the Javelin Throw would be the strongest favourites for the bookmakers.

Isinbayeva’s 5.05m World record in Beijing was the 24th of her career, while Thorkildsen is the only man this season to have thrown past the 90m line and he has done this in his last two competitions, Beijing and Zürich.

These Olympic champions should exit King Baudouin Stadium with one more victory to their credit, as they are currently far ahead of the world, peerless, in fact. Ok, when the Russian no heights and/or Finland’s World champion Tero Pitkämäki launches his spear past 91m, we’ll reflect again on the possible stupidity of such bold statements!

Never counting on victory until the line is crossed

Lolo Jones knows all about counting your victories prematurely. Hitting the penultimate hurdle, so relegating herself from first to seventh in a matter of moments in the Olympic 100m Hurdles final, the American is the perfect example of someone experiencing the vagaries of sport.

The World Indoor 60m Hurdles champion was back to winning ways in the first meet after Beijing, in Zürich last Friday (29 Aug) but was off the podium again in Lausanne on Tuesday (2 Sep). Here she faces Jamaican Delloreen Ennis-London who won that race, with the Olympic silver and bronze medallists Sally McLellan and Priscilla Lopes-Schliepp, respectively of Australia and Canada, also in the line-up.

The men’s 400m Hurdles offers USA’s World champion Kerron Clement the chance to return to the top. Surprised by compatriot Angelo Taylor at the Olympics, who also saw him off again in their re-run in Zürich, Clement has ‘only’ the Olympic fourth placer Danny McFarlane to deal with in Brussels. No worries there then, as we all know what a poor time Jamaican athletes have been having this summer!

The other race over the barriers tomorrow, the men’s 3000m Steeplechase, sees the return of the Olympic and World champion Brimin Kipruto for the first time since his win in Beijing. World season leader Paul Kipsele Koech, who was not in Beijing is sure to want to make it fast.

A quick pace is the request for the men’s 5000m and 10,000m. Olympic silver medallists Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya and Sileshi Sihine of Ethiopia both hope to excel without the spectre of Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele looming over their racing ambitions. They have outlined their intentions to go for the world season leads in their races – 12:50.18 and 26:25.97 – which are held by, yes you’ve guessed it, Kenenisa Bekele, who ended his summer in autumnal conditions last Sunday in Gateshead (31 Aug).

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While ‘Bekele's cat’ is away the others can play in Brussels - ÅF Golden League

On her way to securing what she hopes will be her sixth victory of the series, and at least a share of the $1 Million Jackpot, Pamela Jelimo has also asked for a brisk 800m race, 1:24 for 600m, which would basically be on World record schedule. The duties of rabbit will be performed as they were in Zürich by Olympic fourth placer Svetlana Klyuka.

The men’s 800m will be paced by Kenyan Ismail Kombich, with his compatriot Olympic champion Wilfried Bungei wanting a lively run as a precursor to setting his long term sights next season on the 24-year-old African record of Sammy Koskei, 1:42.28.

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With Olympic quest finally behind him, Bungei's focus now is on more fast times - Brussels, ÅF Golden League

In the women’s 5000m, Ethiopia’s Meseret Defar has requested a World record pace. Just one second short of the mark (14:11.15) in Stockholm in July with a 14:12.88 victory, the question remains, is anyone fit to keep her company for long enough in her attempt? The world’s most experienced pacer, Russia’s Olga Komyagina, will take her to 2km, with the hope that Ethiopia’s Ayalew Wude might find strength enough to assist her compatriot for one of two more laps after that point.

To wrap up our saunter through Friday night’s card, Asbel Kiprop of Kenya and Nick Willis of New Zealand, the silver and bronze medallists in Beijing, will fight it out once more over 1500m.

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Not dreading end-of-season fatigue, Willis is ready for Brussels Challenge -ÅF Golden League

Finally, in the men’s Long Jump, Zürich winner Hussein Taher Al-Sabee, who early season was at one time a Jackpot candidate, is the man to beat.

Chris Turner for the IAAF