Magakwe faces Bolt, Blake

SOUTH Africa's 100m star Simon Magakwe, who had to watch the London Olympics on TV, will get to compete against Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake in Europe later this year.

Magakwe will take on the world's two fastest men in a 4x100m relay race at the IAAF world challenge meet in Ostrava on June 27, according to his manager.

Magakwe will race for a makeshift South African team against Bolt and Blake, who will represent the Racers Track Club of Jamaican coach Glen Mills.

Magakwe spent a spell training with Bolt, Blake and Mills in 2010.

The other SA sprinters accompanying Magakwe to the Czech Republic competition will probably be Hannes Dreyer, Gideon Trotter, Ofentse Mogawane and Lebogang Moeng.

Trotter will be the only one of these flyers in action tonight in Potchefstroom at the first meet of the local track and field season.

Magakwe, who equalled the 10.06sec SA record for the 100m last year, ran six 100m and two 200m Olympic qualifying times in South Africa.

But selection criteria for Team SA also required a second qualifying time at an international meet, which Magakwe failed to achieve.

While the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee were within their rights to omit Magakwe from Team SA, they were criticised for imposing overly stringent qualifying criteria for track and field athletes - the international requirements were simply one qualifying time per event.

The 100m qualifying time for the world championships in Moscow in August is 10.15sec.

Tonight, 400m hurdler LJ van Zyl, who ran the world's fastest time in 2011 but crashed at the 2012 Games, runs in the 400m sprint against Andre Olivier, who competed in the 800m at the Olympics.