John REGIS

After having achieved a career highlight of winning two individual and two relay medals at the 1990 European Championships in Split, it was understandable that John Regis experienced difficulty in maintaining that momentum the following year. However, this was more in relation to his individual performances, as John achieved some quite notable successes during 1991 as a member of national relay teams. On 3 March, at Edinburgh, he anchored a Great Britain foursome against the USA to victory in a new world indoor record for the 4 x 200m relay of 1min 22.11sec. In the outdoor season, he clocked the best time (31.99sec) ever recorded by a European over 300 metres, an event which does not qualify for official record status.

At the World Championships held that year in Tokyo, John was unlucky not to make the final of the 200m when he finished fifth in his semi-final. However, Regis made up for this disappointment with some fine performances in the two relay finals held on 1 September. In the 4 x 100m relay final, Regis ran the second leg on the Great Britain team which finished third behind the USA in 38.09sec, the fastest third-place finish in history. Great Britain enjoyed even greater success in the 4 x 400m relay final. It was a race in two between Great Britain and the USA at the end of the second leg, when Regis received the baton four metres behind his counterpart from the USA. Regis (see photo above) made up some of the deficit on the third leg, before passing to Kriss Akabusi, who ran the race of his life to catch and pass the individual 400m gold medallist Antonio Pettigrew (USA), and bring Great Britain home to win the gold medal in a new European record of 2min 57.53sec. (Ron Casey)