Season's bests fall in Monaco

Even if Maurice Greene and Marion Jones were missing from the last international Golden League athletics meeting before next month's world championships, the stars were still shining in Monaco on Friday.

The world's fastest man over 100 metres, Greene, suffering from a knee injury of late, opted to join Marion Jones and run in London this weekend.

But he looked in fine form earlier as he trained and later said he felt "great."

Celebrations were planned late into the night in Monaco, but the real fireworks came in the men's 800 metres as Switzerland's world champion favourite Andre Bucher beat off Russian prodigy Yuriy Borzakovskiy.

The Swiss swept to victory in 1 minute 42.90 - the fastest time this year and a Swiss record -- despite a late surge from the 20-year-old Russian, who has said he will not be running in Edmonton at the world championships.

Bucher said: "More than the time, I'm really happy about the way I ran. It was fantastic...I'm really confident - four seasonal bests in four races and now a national record. I have a positive pressure for the world championships."

Still conditions and warm weather meant a raft of athletes lowered the season's best times with a particularly impressive run by Olympic champion Maria Mutola, who snatched victory on the line in the women's 800 metres from Brazil's Fabianne dos Santos.

Romanian's Sydney silver medallist Violeta Szekely notched up another fastest this season, as the impressive 36-year-old narrowly beat Russia's Natalya Gorelova to win the 1,500 metres in 3.59.35.

FRESH AND HAPPY

With a fresh and happy looking Greene restricted to the sidelines, the men's 100 metres was an unusually open race. Even so, the result was a shock with American Bernard Williams snatching victory by 0.01 seconds from compatriot Jon Drummond, ahead of fellow U.S. athlete Curtis Johnson.

If the night brought smiles to the faces of most, pole vault world champion Maksim Tarasov's dreams were crushed when his leg crumpled underneath him as he landed and he was stretchered away. The extent of his injury was not immediately known.

Elsewhere, Kenya's Tegla Loroupe -- the world's fastest female marathon runner -- vowed that she would never again run for Kenya after she was dumped from the country's team for the world championships.

Olympic 1,500 metres champion Noah Ngeny, who was also dropped, said he was disappointed.

Ngeny, who did not run in Monaco, said that after suffering from typhoid during the winter, he had run in the Kenyan trials and earned a place in the national team before he and other Kenyan athletes were asked to return to Kenya from their training overseas.

"Unfortunately by this time I had entered into contractual agreements to participate in the Grand Prix in London on July 22 and as a professional athlete and man of my word, I need to fulfil this obligation," he said.

He added that three weeks ago he and his fellow athletes discovered that one of their team mates in London, 800 metre runner Luka Kipkoech, had been diagnosed with leukaemia, so they had been busy raising the funds for his treatment.

"So...I am disappointed not to be going to Edmonton but sometimes we have to think of other people's situations and realise that there are more important things in life."