Stuttgart 1993 — when Jackson, Gunnell and Christie put British athletics on top of the world
“I remember one night in 1994 at China White’s,” recalls Colin Jackson. “It was an after-party for a Prince concert. My sister came up to me and said ‘Do you know who you’ve been talking to all night’. I replied ‘It’s Vanessa Paradis, innit?’ She shook her head and then I realised. ‘Oh yeah – that’s Kate Moss!’”
A virtual teetotaller, Jackson is anything but a nightclub regular. With this anecdote, though, he was making a point about the trendiness of British athletics in the early 1990s.
In Jackson’s words, this was “the era of Cool Britannia, of Oasis versus Blur”. And it was also a time when athletics stood at the top of our sporting pecking order, just as cricket did in the 1980s and football has throughout the 21st Century. Between 1991 and 1995, three different athletes – Liz McColgan, Linford Christie and Jonathan Edwards – claimed the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.
Everyone knows that athletics has slipped down the rankings over the last 30 years. The 55-strong British squad heading to Budapest for next week’s World Championships will be among the smallest ever fielded. Still, many greybeards remember the glory days – and in particular the Stuttgart World Championships. Staged in August 1993, Stuttgart was the meet where Jackson finally delivered on his talent by skipping over the 110 metre hurdles in 12.91sec, a world record that would stand for 13 years.
And Jackson was not the only one. Sally Gunnell and Linford Christie – the other members of what was then a “Big Three” of British athletics – also logged the fastest times of their careers. As a result, Great Britain finished equal fourth in the medal table. (Of the countries ahead of them, the United States and China were both demographic giants, while third-placed Russia was hardly known for playing fair.)
Was this the peak of Britain’s athletic fortunes? That’s tough to say. The late 70s/early 80s had been a boom time too, thanks to Daley Thompson and assorted middle-distance champions. Super Saturday at the London Olympics also has its adherents. But Stuttgart was certainly a high-water mark, especially for what was known as the “golden generation”.
“For me, Stuttgart was actually bigger than winning the Olympics the previous year,” Gunnell told Telegraph Sport. “This was the moment when I became a household name, because I had been under Linford’s shadow a bit in Barcelona in 1992. Breaking the world record, that was the ultimate. And it was a special week all round. We were housed in very basic accommodation – a wooden army barracks with these inch-thick mattresses. It wasn’t glamorous, but that meant that everyone hung out together and supported each other. You could easily knock on people’s doors and chat, whereas at an Olympics you’re all so spread out that it’s hard to find anyone.”
Jackson also remembers a buoyant mood among the team. Apart from the big three, another 10 British athletes got to stand on the podium, including such stalwarts as John Regis (200m), Mick Hill (javelin), Tony Jarrett (110m hurdles), Steve Smith (high jump) and the future triple-jump legend Jonathan Edwards.
“We spent so many hours just playing cards,” Jackson recalled. “There was that sense of chat and camaraderie. And even though there were superstars – and there were co-stars – there was no sense of arrogance from anybody in the team. We just were all one genuine happy family, including the team management.”
Is Jackson laying it on a bit thick here? There’s always bound to be some sort of tension in a national team, even if it is only over relay-team selections. Neither is Christie – the men’s team captain – a man with an easy-going nature. As his autobiography To Be Honest With You states, Christie has always nursed “a personal dislike of [the then national coaching director] Frank Dick”.
What isn’t in doubt is that the “big three” comprised a gang within a gang, offering mutual support and upbeat vibes. On the eve of her final, Gunnell found herself in low spirits, fretting about the heavy cold she had contracted during a training camp at nearby Zofingen. It was Jackson and Christie who sat with her at dinner and bombarded her with positivity.
“They were the ones who understood,” Gunnell recalled. “We had built that relationship up over two or three years. I do remember thinking it was only me who felt crippled by nerves just before a race. When Linford said he was the same, it was quite reassuring, because I had only ever seen him as this big strong guy.
“Linford and I were the team captains in Stuttgart but we agreed to stay in the village, despite the shabby accommodation, even though lots of our counterparts from other countries were checking into posh hotels and taking limos to the track. We wanted to set an example. I think the fact that the whole team sat around and chatted rubbish throughout that week meant that everyone felt included, everyone fed off the buzz.
“Linford had his enemies but he was very loyal to the people he was close to. When we used to sit at breakfast or dinner, he loved shocking us. He’d come out with ridiculous statements, designed to create an argument or ‘don’t be stupid’ scenarios. But he had a real heart on him as well.”
Not to mention a rare turn of speed. In the 100m final, Christie was delighted to outpace both Carl Lewis and Andre Cason. Both of these rivals had been needling him during the build-up to Stuttgart, claiming that he had won the Barcelona Olympics only because the Americans were not there.
Then it was Gunnell’s turn. Drawn two lanes behind her great rival Sandra Farmer-Patrick, she shrugged off her congestion to deliver the run of her life. “It wasn’t until halfway down the back straight that I realised I’d broken the world record,” she explained. “I did the longest lap of honour ever. I learned from the Olympics, because when I won in Barcelona I couldn’t take it all in. I thought ‘This time I’m gonna milk this.’ I kept finding people I knew in the crowd. I saw Jon [Bigg, her husband] and gave him the biggest hug.”
And so to Jackson. By contrast with his cronies, his Olympic experience had been one of hubris and nemesis. Arriving in Barcelona in “exceptional shape”, he felt confident enough to send his personal physio home. He then omitted to warm up for his second-round heat, inviting the misfortune of a clipped hurdle and a torn oblique muscle.
Disgusted with his seventh-place finish in Barcelona, Jackson went home and ramped up his training efforts alongside Christie and the new Olympic high hurdles champion Mark McCoy of Canada. Another failure in Stuttgart might have finished him.
“I remember arriving there and thinking to myself, ‘Well, thank God Linford and Sally are before me,’” says Jackson now. “As an athlete, you don’t want to be the person who’s first and you really don’t want to be the person who’s last, particularly when everybody else has been successful.
“When I came down the stairs the morning after Linford’s final, there was a big sign on the wall in the GB house that said ‘Congratulations Linford, new European record 9.87!’ And then, a couple of days later, I came down the stairs and there’s ‘Congratulations Sally, 52.74 new world record!’ I was thinking, ‘No pressure, then!’
“Going into my final, I felt physically sick. I did two block starts, which were both absolutely disastrous, smashing into the first hurdle. Walking back, I thought ‘I won’t do another one. I’ll just leave it to the gods. I’ve done this so many times.’ My chest was pounding as I went back into the blocks. It went completely silent in the stadium. And then when the gun went, and I took the first two strides, it was the strangest thing, because I just knew I’d won the race.
“Coming across the line. I was just happy with the gold. I didn’t think about it being a world record. As I was going around the lap of honour, the first thing that came to mind was, ‘Why didn’t I do this last year?’ But then I got back to the GB house, and there it was on the wall: ‘Congratulations, Colin Jackson!’ I just giggled. There was a huge sense of relief. And it was ultimately my big breakthrough. I call it the win that gave me me.”
Gunnell has a nice story about the next home meet after Stuttgart, which happened to be staged in Sheffield. She, Jackson and Christie had put their heads together and commissioned matching gold leotards to commemorate their world titles. But when it came to race night, “Colin and Linford looked amazing with their dark skin. Whereas I just looked like I had a bit of a tan and no clothes on.”
There is a surprising postscript to the story of Stuttgart’s big three. Christie – who did not respond to interview requests – has acknowledged that he and Jackson were “like brothers” around this time. So close, in fact, that in 1993 they formed a management agency together called Nuff Respect. Yet the collaboration proved that business and friendship can make uneasy bedfellows.
Only Christie and Jackson knew exactly what happened over the next four years, but Jackson has previously written that “He wasn’t in with reality … the business to him was all about ego and becoming a superstar.” By 1997, relations had soured so badly that Jackson found himself on the verge of doing something much dafter than sending his physio home from Barcelona.
Having travelled down to the Nuff Respect offices in London, and found Christie absent, Jackson called his sister to say that he had a packet of matches in his hand – and was preparing to burn the building down. What a grim turn of events that would have been. Thankfully, though, he didn’t go through with the threat. And now, a quarter-century on, he and Christie are largely reconciled after a few years without contact.
“My mind was mad that day,” Jackson recalls now. “I would describe myself as enraged to that extent. When you’re in that kind of state, all sorts of stuff could happen. But I genuinely feel that I was sent a spirit to say ‘Calm yourself down, young man.’
“I think Linford and I were lucky to have gone through stuff previously, which leaves you with positive memories. You find yourself remembering some lunacy from a meet in Brussels, for example. You start to giggle about that and it brings you back into reality.
“Today, myself and Linford are working closely together again, because we both do stuff for Puma. I see John Regis and Tony Jarrett around the place, and Sal and I chat a lot as well. When people see us together, they must think that we’re six years old because we instantly go back to our teenage years. We laugh, we shout, we make a lot of noise. People must be going, ‘Why do they not just shut up?’”
