Ailing body finally betrays speedster Maurice Greene

By John Mehaffey

LONDON (Reuters) - Betrayed finally by the body which once hurtled along a track faster than any man in the world, Maurice Greene reached journey's end this month.

At the age of 33, the 2000 Sydney Olympics 100 meters champion conceded that he could not get in shape in time for the Beijing Games and announced his retirement.

"I was getting these little nagging injuries that have just stopped me from training the way that I need to," Greene told Reuters in a telephone interview from Los Angeles this week.

"It's a mental battle trying to come back from injuries and I don't feel like having that mental battle with myself."

American hegemony in the men's 100 meters has been taken for granted since the rebirth of the Olympic Games in 1896. In reality, there have been lulls; notably in the 1920s and 1970s and again in the 1990s, the decade when Greene's raw talent first became apparent in his home town of Kansas City.

After Carl Lewis had run his last great race at the 1991 Tokyo world championships, Linford Christie won the 1992 Olympic title for Britain in Barcelona.

Christie captured the 1993 world title and was then succeeded as world and Olympic champion by another Jamaican-born sprinter, Canadian Donovan Bailey.

Meanwhile, Greene was eliminated in the quarter-finals at the 1995 Gothenburg world championships and, hampered by a hamstring injury, failed to qualify for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics team.