Athletics career
McKoy came to the international athletics scene in 1982, winning a gold medal for the 110 metres hurdles and silver for the 4 × 100 metres relay at the Commonwealth Games. The following year, McKoy finished fourth in the 110 metres hurdles at the first World Championships and then repeated this finishing position at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
In 1986, McKoy repeated his victory in the 110 metres hurdles at the Commonwealth Games and upgraded his 4 × 100 metres relay silver to gold.
At the 1987 World Championships, he finished seventh in the 110 metres hurdles.
McKoy finished seventh in the 110 metres hurdles at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, hitting a number of hurdles in the final. His compatriot Ben Johnson tested positive for banned substances at the Games. In protest of the rush to judgement and treatment of his friend and teammate, Mark left the Olympic games prior to competing in the 4 × 100 metre relay. This act led to McKoy receiving a 2-year suspension from international athletics from the Canadian Olympic Committee. Over the course of the Dubin Inquiry, McKoy testified that as a young man and under pressure from his coach, Charlie Francis, he briefly experimented with performance enhancing drugs.
McKoy made his comeback at the 1991 World Championships, once again finishing fourth in 110 metres hurdles. At the Olympic Games in Barcelona, McKoy put his fourth-place streak behind him and won the gold medal in 13.12 seconds. It was the first Canadian Olympic gold medal in track and field since Duncan McNaughton's first-place finish in the high jump competition in 1932; at the same time, McKoy became the first black Canadian to win an Olympic gold medal. At the 1993 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Toronto he won the 60 metres hurdles title.
McKoy emigrated to Austria and subsequently obtained Austrian citizenship in 1994. He spent the last years of his career competing for his adopted country and set an Austrian record of 13.14 seconds in the 110 m hurdles. [1]
McKoy was inducted into the Athletics Canada Hall of Fame in 2011 [2] and the Athletics Ontario Hall of Fame within the Class of 2014. [3]
In February 2021, McKoy featured in an Athletics Canada article for Black History Month celebrating the lives and careers of notable Canadian black athletes; also included were Andre De Grasse, Phylicia George, Charmaine Crooks, Harry Jerome, Barbara Howard and Ray Lewis. [4]
A training partner of Colin Jackson, he appeared with Jackson and Linford Christie in the workout video The S Plan: Get Fit with Christie and Jackson in 1993. [5]
In April 2020, McKoy was interviewed by Christian Bosse for his Train like an Olympian website and YouTube channel. [6]
In February 2023, McKoy was a guest of Andrew Applebaum on his Toronto Legends podcast series. [7]
McKoy features in the 2024 documentary Colin Jackson: Resilience, talking about his athletics rivalry with Jackson and in particular the 1992 Olympic 110m hurdles event where McKoy won gold and Jackson under-performed after picking up an injury during the second round. Casting his mind back to the final and his surprise not to see Jackson on his left shoulder, McKoy says: "I come off the last hurdle, I run through the line. What the hell happened? Where's Colin? I turn around and I went directly back to find where Colin was." Jackson hit several hurdles, nearly falling at the last, and could only finish seventh. [8]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
