Athletics in the UK: The Rise and Fall of the BAF

124 What about the athletes? As the decade of the eighties ended and that of the nineties began, a new group of star athletes was putting British athletics on the map. Linford Christie and Colin Jackson already had Olympic medals and Jonathan Edwards, Steve Backley and Roger Black had shown what they could do. Not to be outdone by the men, Liz McColgan and Yvonne Murray were already world class and Sally Gunnell was challenging for stardom. In 1990, the European Championships were held in Split, in what is now Croatia. Britain has traditionally done well at European Championships and this was to prove no exception. Steve Backley (already the world record holder) and Linford Christie got the team off to a good start with wins in the javelin and 100m respectively. The medals piled up and, in all, Britain won 9 gold medals, 5 silver and 4 bronze. This outstanding medal haul, however, concealed Britain’s Achilles heels; all the medals except one (Backley’s) were won in track events and, despite the team’s third place in the previous year’s European Cup, there was only one individual women’s medal, that of Yvonne Murray in the 3000m. 1991 was another busy year for the athletes but was also a big year for the administrators as, at long last, the BAF was voted into being and took over the management of the sport on 1 st October of that year. The reigning European men’s team champions travelled to Frankfurt for the European Cup and narrowly failed to retain its title, losing to the victorious Soviet Union by a mere 2.5 points, the women again coming third. After the euphoria of the previous European Championships, the 1991 world championships in Tokyo would be a stern test for the new stars of the British team. Although winning a creditable 8 medals in all, there was only one individual gold, from Liz McColgan-Lynch in the 10,000m, but the final event of the entire championships was Britain’s to savour when Kriss Akabusi won the dramatic drive to the line and took gold in the 4x400m relay, the thickness of his vest ahead of the USA. In late 1991, a few months after its formation, the BAF received a proposal for an international match against South Africa, to take place in South Africa the following year. South Africa had long been the pariah of international sport because of its apartheid policies and British athletics had already received a bruising over the Zola Budd affair.