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Bolt looking for improvement

Ostrava - Usain Bolt, the world's fastest man, hopes to have remembered how to sprint properly when he runs the 100 metres in Ostrava on Tuesday.

The Jamaican Olympic champion and world record holder looked rusty when sneaking past Asafa Powell to win the Diamond League meeting in Rome last week, his first race since losing to American Tyson Gay nine months earlier.

"I didn't do my drive phase so that kind of took away from my transition and then I had to work to get back into the race," Bolt, who won in Rome in 9.91 seconds which came after a sluggish start, told a news conference.

"My shoulder came up, my stride pattern was off so it was just really a bad race. My coach asked me if I forgot how to run."

The 24-year-old, who won three gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2009 world championships in Berlin, said his "bulked-up" look was due to working hard in the gym to prevent the back problems that nagged him last year.

"I think I have been doing a lot more exercises," he said. "I have been really working core because I don't want any back problems this season, so I have been really doing a lot of back exercises and abs.

"I have been in the gym a lot, my coach doesn't like it when I bulk up too much so I was trying not to do too much but this is the first season I have actually been really consistent in the gym. I think that is the reason I am so much bigger this season."

With this year's world championships on the horizon, Bolt said he was not even looking at what his main rivals were doing.

"Last season was my season off," he said. "But this season I am really focused and I am ready and I am going to work hard to get back to where I was.

"For me, the focus is never on one athlete. For me to sit and focus on Tyson - he hasn't really run 100 metres this season yet, so I can't sit and say oh, I wonder what he is going to do. I need to focus on what I need to get done.

"I am going to focus on this one now and I am trying to get back into shape and I guess I will meet him at the world championships."

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