My greatest race – Ellen van Langen

Rated as an outside bet due to an Achilles injury the previous year, the Dutch athlete chose the perfect time to reach a career peak, a ferocious finish propelling her to gold. The welcome home to the Netherlands brought an unexpected bump in the road, though

Coming out of 1991, I knew I had to be patient during that next year and not try to rush things, but I also had to qualify for Barcelona. There were plenty of good races in Europe, but they were more technical.

I knew I needed to get the qualifying standard so I had to plan, going to a race in France where I knew it would be fast, just to get it out of the way. It was all about my training, because I was always a bit injury prone, but if I could train steadily for a couple of months then it would be okay.

Having an Olympics closer to the Netherlands was great but it made no difference to my Mum. She had never been on a plane before and at one point she told me she’d bought tickets, but only for the 800m final. It was months before but I said: “Buy tickets for the heats as well.” She was like: “No, it’s way too expensive.”

That was partly because I didn’t come from a traditional athletics family. She didn’t really have an idea of how it worked. I didn’t even have that many friends come to Barcelona. My athletics life and my social life were quite separate, even if they [my friends and family] all supported me very much.

I won 10 of my 11 races that year and so I got to the Olympics with a plan: it was all about making sure I would be in the final because, in the 800m, sometimes good athletes go out in the heat or semis because of wrong tactics. I thought: “When I’m in the final, then anything is possible.” I was not really counting on the medal, but I was certainly considering that I had a chance of one.

Sometimes, 800s are run slowly and [if that had happened] then it wouldn’t have been me winning out. My feeling was to stick with a race as long as possible and then I had a kick. I always had the mental strength to go pretty deep, because the part between 600m and the finish is not fun for any 800m runner, so you have to stay as relaxed as possible in that part and still be able to go as fast as possible with 200m to go.

I knew that, as long as I was there with 120m left, I was confident – not to win, but to be in contention. I knew when my kick could start and, coming through the middle of the final bend, I passed Ella Kovacs on the inside and…