Boxing Betting / Ralph Ellis / 17 March 2010 /

The World Heavyweight Champion has enlisted the help of two Olympic gold medallists to help him prepare for his title defence next month. Ralph Ellis believes it's a winning move.

My mum - as mums do - had a number of favourite sayings. The most common of them was "Get down here and do the washing up," but another was: "He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day."

I wonder if David Haye's mum used to say that as well, because it appears he's doing something about following the advice (and no, I don't mean he does the washing up). It appears Haye, rapidly emerging as the brightest star British boxing has produced for years, has added a new dimension to his training by enrolling the help of both Usain Bolt and Linford Christie. (Who else would you turn to for coaching on how to run away very fast?)

Now, in the case of Bolt, the human streak of lightening who lit up the 2008 Olympics with that incredible golden sprint double, I suspect the relationship is not much more than a bit of mutual publicity seeking. The two of them, it appears, met at Wembley last season when England beat Croatia and palled up again on various nights out in town.

But with Christie, who is steadily trying to rebuild his name after the failed drug tests that destroyed his own career, there's a deadly serious side to it all. Linford has been taking a lower profile in his promotions company lately and choosing instead to work at coaching different athletes including Darren Campbell. Now Haye has been to see the 1992 Olympic 100m gold medallist to add a different dimension to his training before he fights John Ruiz at Manchester's MEN Arena on April 3.

They've been doing track sessions at Brunel University in West London with the idea of adding even more explosive power to the strength and punching that has made Haye the WBA world heavyweight champion.

Haye typically reckons he could go into sprinting when he hangs up his gloves in two years. "I could run 100m in under 10 seconds," he says. You can take that with a pinch of salt from a man who learned before he fought Nikolai Valuev how to be as big a world champion publicist as he is a boxer. But the value of cross training sessions to his ringcraft won't be in dispute.

Haye is [1.19] in the early market to beat Ruiz, and even that is value because the Londoner is in prime condition and doing everything right for the first defence of his hard won title. His real target, of course, is to get into the ring with one then eventually both of the Klitschko brothers, with the plan for the first of those fights to take place in December. It will probably be against Wladimir who is [1.11] to successfully defend both the IBF and WBO versions of the title this Saturday in Dusseldorf against Eddie Chambers.

Who knows, maybe a December triumph, a year after his brilliant David v Goliath slaying of Valuev, could be just in time for him to emulate Christie another way - by winning Sports Personality of the Year (he's [22] to win it and [4.7] to be in the top three)

Five things you might not know about Linford Christie

Born in Jamaica in April 1960 he was brought up by his grandmother and was seven before he joined his parents who had moved to England.

He was 19 before he took up athletics seriously.

He was the first European sprinter to run 100m in under ten seconds.

He's a keen amateur gardener and has hosted the BBC programme Garden Invaders.

His 20-year-old niece Rachel, a promising heptathlete, won the 2009 Miss England beauty contest but lost the title four months later after being accused of hitting Miss Manchester in a nightclub incident.

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