Table of Contents
Introduction
Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett: The 800-Metre Duel
At the 1978 European championships, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett met in a race for the first time. The two up-and-coming British runners, keenly aware of each other, approached the event as if it were a two-man affair, and they learned a hard lesson when East Germany’s Olaf Beyer outran them both. From then on Coe and Ovett deliberately avoided running in the same races. Despite this, they staged a furious battle in the record books for much of the next two years. They leapfrogged each other as world record holder in the mile. Just weeks before the 1980 Games ...(100 of 369 words)