Undoubtedly Europe’s greatest ever 100m sprinter, Linford became the Olympic 100m Champion after winning the Gold Medal in Barcelona, 1992. In an International career spanning seventeen years, Linford competed over 60 times for his country and won more major championship medals, 23, than any other British sprinter.
Linford is the only British athlete to have won Gold medals in the 100 metres at all four major competitions and was the first European to have run sub ten seconds. His fastest time of 9.87 seconds was recorded when he won the 1993 World Championship in Stuttgart.
Amongst the numerous awards bestowed upon Linford, were the prestigious 1993 ‘BBC Sports Personality of the Year’ and ‘European Athlete of the Year’.
Linford has appeared on numerous television shows, having presented three series of ‘Linford’s Record Breakers’ on BBC1 and ‘Garden Invaders’ amongst others. He has worked as a technical commentator in Athletics and has presented many sport-specific programmes over the years. Linford was CNN’s lead commentator throughout the London 2012 Olympic Games when he analysed action on the Athletics track and provided his expert views and opinions.
Linford’s success in Athletics has continued since his retirement in a coaching role, having coached a number of top athletes to success including Olympic medallists Darren Campbell, Katharine Merry, Mark Lewis Francis and Commonwealth Gold Medallist Laura Turner. He has also trained alongside and coached Frankie Fredericks. Linford is currently coaching some of Britain’s leading international athletes, European Indoor Silver Medallist & European U23 400m Champion Nigel Levine and Olympians James Ellington and Margaret Adeoye. Linford is one of Britain’s most successful Coaches and had 5 Athletes competing in the London Olympics in 2012 and 3 athletes in Rio 2016 Olympics.
Linford launched Street Athletics in June 2004 in conjunction with Manchester City Council, in an attempt to find the raw sprinting talent that is being lost to other sports and computer games. The scheme was extended to cover 4 cities in 2006. Since 2005 the project has grown and become more successful, visiting its greatest amount of venues, 22, in 2009 and still going strong in 2017.