Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett were two British middle-distance runners whose rivalry played out at the Moscow 1980 Games.
Sebastian Coe was the best 800m runner in the world, while Steve Ovett was the best 1,500m runner in the world (indeed, at this distance and the non-Olympic mile distance he hadn’t lost a race in three years – that’s 45 races). Coe was handsome and well-spoken and in contrast, Ovett was seen as rather prickly and stand-offish.
What happened when they met at these Olympics (only the second time they’d raced against each other in international competition) would be dramatic, climatic and surprising – in short, Coe won Ovett’s speciality event and Ovett won Coe’s.
Both athletes enjoyed a successful next couple of years, but while Coe repeated his Moscow ’80 results at the 1984 Games, an unwell Ovett struggled in the final of both events and was subsequently taken to hospital.
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