It is just nine days until the start of the European Athletics Indoor Championships and as part of our extensive coverage we are looking back on some of the great moments from its glorious history.
Nobody doubted that Colin Jackson would win the 60m hurdles at the 1994 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Paris – after all, just a week before his final he had set a stupendous world record of 7.30 in Sindelfingen. So stupendous, indeed, that it still stands.
But, for all the 27-year-old Briton’s qualities, nobody expected him to take 60m gold as well and thus become the first male athlete to win the sprint/sprint hurdles double at a major international championship.
Jackson was in the form of his life. The shock and disappointment of his 1992 Olympic failure in the 110m hurdles had receded after his world title win in Stuttgart the following year in a world record of 12.91.
However, on the evening before Saturday night’s sprint hurdles final, Jackson had entered the 60m event – as he put it beforehand, to rattle the cages of the sprinters before turning to his specialist event.
A field that included Russia’s Alexander Porkhomovsky, the previous year’s European Cup silver medallist over 100m, home sprinter Daniel Sangouma, who would go on to take the 200m title in the Championships, and Britain’s 1988 Olympic 200m finalist Mike Rosswess was left in Jackson’s wake as the hurdler got a superb start.
He won in 6.49, a personal best by 0.06 and only a hundredth of a second off the European record set in Karlsruhe the previous month by his compatriot Linford Christie. Jackson had the good grace to look surprised.
“That is my last 60m,” he said afterwards. “I never felt in control of what I was doing.”
The following evening he was in total control as he won the 60m hurdles title with ease in 7.41.
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Afterwards Jackson acknowledged he had been after a bit more than cage-rattling on the Friday night. “I set myself quite a goal and I have achieved it,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been much of a challenge if I hadn’t done both events.”
Jackson’s achievement made him fit for comparison with the only other male athlete to have earned gold in sprints and sprint hurdles at the highest level, Harrison Dillard of the United States, Olympic champion over 100m in 1948 and over 110m hurdles four years later.
60m Result:
Colin Jackson (GBR) 6.49
Alexandros Terzian (GRE) 6.51
Mike Rosswess (GBR) 6.54
60m Hurdles Result:
Colin Jackson (GBR) 7.41
Gheorghe Boroi (ROM) 7.57
Mike Fenner (GER) 7.58