Athletics legends pay tribute to Mike McFarlane at sprinter’s funeral

Some of the biggest names in British athletics offer their respects to the iconic athlete and coach

Daley Thompson, Linford Christie, Fatima Whitbread and Dwain Chambers led off a host of former Olympians and elite athletes at a packed funeral service for iconic sprinter Mike McFarlane in east London on Thursday (July 7), Rob Draper reports.

There was standing room only at St Mark’s Rise, Dalston, close to the Hackney streets where McFarlane grew up, with around a thousand mourners crammed into the church.

Tony Jarrett, Dalton Grant, Donna Fraser, Julian Golding, Darren Braithwaite and Wendy Sly were among those paying tribute to the 1982 Commonwealth 200m champion, who died at the age of 63 in May and who had represented Team GB at 1980, 1984 and 1988 Olympics, winning a silver medal in the relay in Seoul with Christie, John Regis and Elliot Bunney.

A tribute from Regis was read at the service by McFarlane’s former training partner, Donovan Reid, who was a pallbearer with other former team-mates and one of several speakers highlighting not just McFarlane’s athletics achievements, but his commitment to wife Joanne and son Ryan.

The trailblazing sprinter also won European indoor gold medals over 60m, was also European Junior 200m champion in 1979, three times English Schools 200m champion, a Commonwealth bronze medallist over 100m in 1986 and relay medal winner at European and Commonwealth Games.

Team-mates Phillip Tapper and Vernon Bramble from his first club, Victoria Park Harriers, spoke about McFarlane’s schoolboy successes and the junior sprint relay record they set in 1976, which remains a club record for both junior and senior men: indeed, McFarlane still holds all the 100m and 200m club records for senior and junior men at the club.

Best known for his unprecedented dead heat gold medal, which he shared with Scotland’s Allan Wells, in the 1982 Commonwealth Games 200m in Brisbane, the judges unable to separate them despite the photo finish, McFarlane also came fifth in the 1984 Olympic 100m final, behind winner Carl Lewis and bronze medallist Ben Johnson, a final in which Reid came seventh.

“We weren’t meant to make the final, people thought we were just there to make up numbers, but we had other plans,” Reid told the congregation, relaying how the competitive drive of McFarlane, known as Mac to friends, had driven him to his Olympic, Commonwealth and European medals.

“Let me tell…