ATHLETICS:There may be no real cure for an Olympics hangover but the world's two best sprinters going head-to-head will do, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

EVERYONE KNOWS the simple explanation for a hangover is the sudden and complete withdrawal of alcohol from the bloodstream, that swelling of the brain against the lining of the skull, and that sometimes the only way to handle it is to have one more drink – preferably of similar strength.

The same goes for the sudden and complete withdrawal from the Olympics: you don’t go 16 hours a day for 16 days straight without generating industrial amounts of pure adrenaline, and the truth is that becomes a daily fix as addictive and as lethal as pure ethanol. Try coming off that cold turkey, without shouting epithets at yourself, reviling the desperation, heaping treasures of coarse abusive language onto anyone within earshot.

So, just in the nick of time, the BBC’s beautiful little red button served up the Diamond League meeting from Lausanne on Thursday night, which went down as sweet as the finest Puerto Rican rum and coke. Even on the heels of the high drama and incredible excitement of London this didn’t disappoint, even if the two headline acts – Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake – were this time served up separately.

It’s been a while since athletics was in such a commanding position, keeping two of its biggest stars apart, and essentially getting away with it. If the London Olympics proved one thing it’s that athletics, once properly packaged and presented, still makes for spectacular entertainment, and no one, it seems, is more capable of that than the Jamaican sprinters – with the possible exception of Mo Farah, and of course David Rudisha.

Why then are they running away from each other, as opposed to against each other? It’s not as if they’ve anything to hide, at least we hope not, and especially not in the Lance Armstrong sense, who it now seems certain is the latest reminder that the truth will always come out in the end.

Not everything about the Jamaican sprint success adds up to a clean total, not when they’re so comfortably surpassing the times of sprinters we know weren’t clean, but that’s not saying there’s any strong reason not to believe.

Anyway, if Bolt and Blake are the biggest names in world athletics right now – and on the evidence of Lausanne they surely are – then who wouldn’t pay good money to watch them go head-to-head: Bolt’s 19.58 seconds for 200 metres on Thursday is only bettered by one other man this year, and that’s Blake; and Blake’s 9.69 seconds for 100 metres on Thursday is only bettered by one other man ever, and that’s Bolt. The fact that Bolt is the only man to have ever run quicker on both counts pretty much seals the deal.

The simple explanation here, it seems, is money, or rather the lack of it – in that none of the big meeting promoters can afford to have them both in the same race. Tomorrow, Birmingham stages another sold-out stop on the Diamond League tour, and yet neither Bolt nor Blake will be there.

Blake’s reasons, at least according to his agent Cubie Seegobin, are definitely financial, as Birmingham were only offering a $40,000 appearance fee, when these days Blake commands closer to $150,000 – still only about half of what Bolt earns each time he races. “Their attitude seems to be, ‘we’ve got Mo Farah, so we don’t need anyone else’, so there’s something wrong there,” said Seegobin, and maybe there is.

Although that’s only part of the deal, the rest of it is partly explained by Andre Agassi: in 2006, Agassi lost an appeal in the British courts against the rule which allows the UK government to demand their take on sponsorship money from international athletes competing in Britain. Agassi was still on big money from Nike at the time, and thus lost a fair chunk of this to the UK tax net after competing in events such as Wimbledon.

Now better known as the “Agassi Tax Rule”, this has effectively stopped Bolt from competing in Britain altogether: he’d be liable to surrender 50 per cent of any race appearance fee to the UK government, while even a couple of races in Britain would see him forfeit around 20 per cent of his overall commercial income. That’s a heavy price for any athlete to pay, although fortunately the rule was waivered for the Olympics, or we could have seen some very high-profile absentees, not just in track and field.

There are other motivations at work here. Bolt, in case anyone needs reminding, has a certain Ricky Simms as his agent, the Donegal native who helps head up Pace Sports Management. Simms has always been careful to maintain a certain distinction about Bolt’s portfolio.

“He’s going to be competing for the next four years,” says Simms, “so he can’t turn into Kim Kardashian, where he can go to an appearance every week.” To complicate matters further, both Bolt and Blake are coached by Glen Mills, who would apparently prefer his two best athletes didn’t race each other again this season, at least not when they don’t have to. The only pity, or indeed danger, in keeping athletes like Bolt and Blake apart is that their value might never be higher than it is now.

After Birmingham, there are only two Diamond League meetings left in 2012 – in Zurich, next Thursday, and finally in Brussels, next Friday week. Bolt will run the 200m again in Zurich, with Blake running the 100m, then they’ll switch events for Brussels. So, instead of lining up together for one more headline showdown, one more potential world record billing, this suddenly great rivalry is suddenly left underplayed.

Because sport has always thrived on pitting the great rivalries against each other, and athletics is no exception. Ali vs Frazier wasn’t based on one fight alone. For years, athletics was craving some of its old hype, and now that it’s got it back, it’s already letting it slip. Strictly speaking, Bolt and Blake are 2-2 this season, Bolt winning the double in London, and Blake winning the double at the Jamaican trials, so it’s only right there should be a decider.

Zurich tried hard to get Bolt and Blake together, and the Weltklasse meeting – which justifiably translates as “world class” – will still provide a fitting climax to the summer: Rudisha, still fresh from his 800m world record of 1:40.91 in London, had always targeted Zurich as a race against the clock, and if conditions are good in the old Letzigrund he might well go closer to the 1:40 barrier, possibly even go under it.

Either way, it won’t be long now until the whole season is gone cold turkey, and imagine a night where Bolt raced Blake one last time, one man ran two laps of the track in under 1:40, all on top of several other quick shots in succession, so that there could be no complaints about the massive hangover that followed, only the need for a slow and quiet cure.