Ringing in the Olympics: Linford Christie

2^nd of August 1992, the middle Saturday of the Barcelona Games and a veritable GB gold-rush for those days (we won two!).

First up, Steve Redgrave makes it three in a row and a lunchtime to remember with new partner, posh-boy Pinsent (writing the first chapter of his own Olympic legend).

And then, accompanying the evening meal – pizza and chips was the Saturday plat du jour round at chez Cunningham – the small matter of the men’s 100m final and lycra-loving Linford Christie, perhaps the most terrifying man ever to grace the track, the subsequent slow-motion clips playing like horror shorts. After 20 metres, the rest was a formality.

Never the most popular among his fellow athletes (the above-mentioned Derek Redmond described him as a well-balanced man, having “a chip on both shoulders”), fuel was generously doused on the fire in later years with that drug ban. That said, many an elite sportsman has done the business well into his 30s – for proof, one need only look so far as Ryan Giggs, Roger Federer and Jocky Wilson.