STOCKHOLM, Aug 19: Newly-crowned Olympic sprint king Usain Bolt was deliberately not invited to the Stockholm Diamond League meeting because the Jamaican commands too great an appearance fee, according to the organisers.

Meet organiser Jan Kowalski told the Expressen tabloid: “We’d get to saturation point if he were to run every year.

“We had talks with him but we thought ‘is it worth paying the price for him to come?’”Kowalski refused to make any statement on the reported remarks when questioned by AFP, but added that the athletes were invited, or not, following an “overall assessment” and according to a “limited budget”.

The absence of the world’s fastest man, who appeared at the Stockholm meet three times between 2009-11, was marked by many more empty seats in the stadium than usual, Expressen said.—AFP