Sprint legend John Regis recalls his greatest race
Everything that summer was directed towards the European Championships and becoming the 200 metres champion. It was basically trying to make sure that, if errors were made, they were made prior to Split.
At the Commonwealth Games earlier that year, I got the silver medal when I really expected to win the gold and in a way that gave me a good kick up the backside, because expectation means nothing until you actually achieve.
It told me: “No, you're not as good as you think.”
I still hadn't trusted the change in the tactics that we were trying to employ that year. I wasn't mentally tough enough at that particular point and the silver medal showed that I wasn't bad – but gold is for winners.
We had actually figured things out because, before then, in most of my races, the plan was to get ahead around the turn and hang on. Let them chase you. When you compete against the best in the world, that's not a clever way of competing because you're leaving it down to luck.
We broke the race down into five facets, and I had to execute each facet in order for me to get the full picture. We looked at it as a jigsaw, a five-piece puzzle. The only time you see the full picture is when you put all the five pieces in place.
The good thing about that was, if there was an error, I knew exactly what piece of the jigsaw puzzle was at fault and then we could go back and work on that and try and make that stronger.
Arriving at the Europeans, I couldn't have been in better shape. I was running well. The confidence level was good. I was trusting in the technical aspects of my running and my coach. It was all about execution.
One thing that really did help me was that I was in the 100 metres final and I ran my personal best of 10.07 to get bronze. I'm a fast athlete, not quick, and there's a big difference. But that cemented the fact that mentally I was ready. Physically, I was ready. I just had to execute.
Linford Christie beat me to gold in the 100m which was two days before the 200m. I wouldn't say we were friends, but I appreciated his talent. He’s like the lion king – he wants to rip your head off because he wants that gold medal and I respected and understood that.
My job was to say: “Hey, I'm trying to rip that from you. And I want to be the guy in charge.” So, in the 100, I think I surprised him with my performance. I thought: “the 200 metres is my house.” In my mind, I'm like, “there is no way you can come and take this medal.”
I had a great training group. Tony Jarrett, Darren Braithwaite, who made the 100m final as well. We were like brothers who all wanted to be champions. Me and Tony went out the morning of my final and did some fast sprints so we’d be ready. Mentally we both wanted to, on that day, get our absolute best performance. So I got to the stadium and I just felt comfortable. I felt relaxed.
I had the lane outside Linford and I knew he was going to try and put me under pressure from as soon as the gun fired. He was going to try and run past me and take me out of my race plan.
But I had the five pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. If I put that together, irrespective of what anybody else is doing, I've got 100 per cent more chance of winning. Once you panic in the race, you can't win. You're not running your own race and you know it's game over. So we prepared for that and, yeah, I put in a hell of a performance.
Sometimes you get the favourite tag and you don't even get a medal. I absolutely performed when I needed to perform. That helped my career going forward, because if I had lost that race, I would never have been able to continue in the same vein that I did go forward as a professional athlete. It showed me that I could do this. I can be a world-class athlete under pressure because Linford’s a tough man to beat.
After that, we got silver in the 4x100m final. We were disappointed because we were better than France but, on the day, they stepped up and broke the world record. You can’t really argue with that. But I did have my coming out party in the 4x400m when we got gold and standing on that podium with three good friends was just awesome.
John Regis
Born: October 13, 1966
Achievements:
1998: Commonwealth 200m bronze
1994: Commonwealth 200m silver
1993: World 200m silver; World 4x100m silver
1992: Olympic 4x400m bronze
1991: World 4x400m gold; 4x100m bronze
1990: European 200m gold; European 4x400m gold; European 100m bronze; European 4x100m silver; Commonwealth 200m silver; Commonwealth 4x100m gold
1989: World Indoor 200m gold
1988: Olympic 4x100m silver
1987: World 200m bronze
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