Greg Foster wins his third world 110m hurdles title in Tokyo in 1991 (© Allsport / Getty Images)
World Athletics is deeply saddened to hear that USA’s Greg Foster, who won three world 110m hurdles titles during his highly successful career, died on Sunday (19) at the age of 64.
A dominant force in men’s sprint hurdling in the 1980s and early 1990s, Foster also claimed Olympic silver in 1984 and won the world indoor 60m hurdles title in 1991, setting a world record for the indoor discipline of 7.36 in 1987.
His impressive consistency saw him feature in the top 12 on the men’s 110m hurdles season top list for 18 consecutive years from 1977 to 1994. Foster led that list five times and his No.12 spot in 1988 was achieved despite him breaking his arm that year. He even raced at the 1988 US Olympic Trials with his broken arm in a cast as he attempted to make the team for the Games in Seoul.
Among the many to pay tribute to Foster was World Athletics CEO Jon Ridgeon, who claimed world 110m hurdles silver behind Foster in Rome in 1987.
“As a young athlete at the start of my career in the mid 1980s, Greg was well established as one of the true legends of the sprint hurdles,” said Ridgeon. “I therefore found myself in the slightly strange position of competing against someone who for many years had been one of my role models and heroes within the sport.
“And I remember that I found Greg exactly as you would want your athletics hero to be – a fierce competitor on the track but always a warm, generous and friendly man away from the intensity of competition. So sad that Greg has passed at such a young age.”
Born in Chicago on 4 August 1958, Foster’s early athletics career included collegiate success for the University of California, Los Angeles, and he claimed NCAA 110m hurdles titles in 1978 and 1980 as well as a 200m title in 1979. His 13.22 110m hurdles at the 1978 NCAA Championships still stands as a UCLA record today. He ran his PB of 13.03 in Zurich in 1981, a performance that at that time made him the second-fastest 110m hurdler in history behind Renaldo Nehemiah, who ran 12.93 in that race to become the first man to break 13 seconds for the event.
The first of Foster’s three world 110m hurdles gold medals was gained at the inaugural World Athletics Championships in Helsinki in 1983 and he retained that title in Rome in 1987 and again in Tokyo in 1991. In the year of that third world 110m hurdles title win, Foster also claimed the world indoor 60m hurdles crown in Seville.
His Olympic medal win came in Los Angeles in 1984, when he finished runner-up to his US teammate Roger Kingdom by just three hundredths of a second.
Foster retired from competition in 1996 and his many achievements saw him inducted into the USATF Hall of Fame in 1998.
He was diagnosed with amyloidosis, a rare disease affecting his heart, at the age of 57 but remained involved in the sport, helping the next generation as a coach.
World Athletics
