My greatest race: Andrea Lynch – Athletics Weekly

British sprinter looks back on her 60m gold at the European Indoor Championships in Katowice in 1975

A silver medallist in Gothenburg 12 months earlier behind East Germany’s Olympic champion Renate Stecher, the Barbados-born Brit arrived in Poland with Commonwealth silver and an outdoor European bronze over 100m. There was a confidence this would finally be her time to strike gold.

The 60m was my distance. I knew I could bomb it for that long. After that, I could maintain until the end of the 100m but 60m was when my coach Tom McNab said I would just fly. I knew nobody could catch me over 60m. After that, it’s give or take.

The summer before, Tom and a few others set up a race at the distance at Crystal Palace and I equalled the outdoor world record with a run of 7.2 when my personal best was 7.16. Coming back from New Zealand and the 1974 Commonwealth Games, I was still fresh and strong enough to compete indoors and get European silver before getting a bronze outdoors in Rome.

So, when I went to the European Indoors of 1975, my mindset was to win. It’s kind of strange to say this, but I knew at the time I would win that one because of the people that were in the race. And that Renate Stecher wasn’t.

Katowice was freezing. It was cold and wet with a lot of black ice. I remember it was a dark place, but the indoor facilities were fantastic and I wasn’t like a lot of these athletes who worry the night before the race. I just did it. If I win, I win. If I don’t, I don’t. It’s just not worth worrying about: “How am I going to do?”.

I had a good start in the final and I just kept going. Monika Meyer, the German, was behind me. Irena Szewińska came third, but I was pretty far clear. It was a good run in the same time that had given me silver the year before.

Ian Stewart won his 3000m race, too, while Geoff Capes came second in the shot put. Arthur Gold, who was team manager at the time, gave us all a bottle of champagne. Geoff was the life of the party but, really, there was no such thing as celebrations.

At the time, I worked for Barclays Bank. They knew I was always gone but didn’t seem to mind. I wasn’t pampered like some of these athletes today. We all worked. A lot of us had jobs and we trained after work. Everybody in Clapham knew me at the time. I was running for Mitcham and the coach there, George Robinson, had a great little team going and everybody worked out together. Everyone knew that on Tuesdays and Thursdays at five o’clock we would be training.

We enjoyed our athletics. We enjoyed when we saw each other. We’d get a letter saying: “Hey, they want you to come to Germany. They want you to go here.” And we went. That was an honour for us. Today, it is expected. Athletics today is a business, it’s not athletics like we had it. 

I remember going out on to the track in Munich at the 1976 Olympics and I was overwhelmed. I kept saying: “Oh my gosh, look at all these people.”

When I look back at certain events that I ran, it was absolutely enjoyable. At the Europeans in Rome, I came third but I should get a silver medal now, because the East Germans have owned up that they were using performance enhancers. I remember when I first ran against Renate at Crystal Palace, and I watched her, I asked my coach if he thought that person was just like a man.

Later, I got a scholarship to go to California to Long Beach State University. I was doing some coaching too and I was working out one day, and this guy came up and said: “I know who you are. You’re Andrea Lynch.” You won’t believe it, but it was Bobby Kersee. He would watch my starts and would tell me what I wasdoing wrong. Then I would show him all the different things I’d learnt. I taught Bobby how to do a few things for his coaching.

The people that mattered recognised me: my family, Tom, and some of my fellow athletes, my comrades. But the British Athletics board, they never bothered. I went to Birmingham a couple of years back, and I went to visit the UK Athletics offices. It’s right under the stadium. And there’s a AAAs Cup with my name on it. I went: “Oh my gosh, it’s still there!”

I did run a world record of 10.8 over 100m in California but it’s never been recognised. I don’t know what’s wrong with the British people but, because it was in America, the people that were in charge at the time were very snooty about it. I had to prove that I’d run a world record. But my best race ever was that 60m indoors. I won that. I have the gold medal.

As told to Mark Woods

Factfile

Born: November 24, 1952

Events: 60m/100m

PBs: 7.17/11.16

International honours:

1975: European Indoor Championships 60m gold

1974: Commonwealth Games 100m silver; European Championships 100m bronze; European Indoor Championships 60m silver, 

1970: European U20 Championships 100m silver