Coach Mike McFarlane helps Desiree Henry prevail at Lille – Athletics news
Fortified by the experience she gained while training under Mike McFarlane, English runner, Desiree Henry bagged a gold medal in the 200m run at the IAAF World Youth Championships being held in Lille, France.
Veteran British athlete and coach, Mike McFarlane helped Henry put up a scintillating show in front of the arena.
Born in 1960, McFarlane, the former English sprinter who specialised in 100m and 200m runs, kicked-off with his athletics career while he was a school boy and dominated the track in three important athletics competitions at his school. The winning habit
developed in him at an early age went on to strengthen itself as time passed and there came a time when McFarlane saw himself prevailing victorious at the AAAs Junior Indoor 60 and 200m titles.
This marvellous success broke all barriers for the athlete and the AAAs Junior Outdoor became the next stage where he won in a 200m battle. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, he won the South of England Championships along with the European Junior Championships
and the AAAs Indoor victories in 200m competitions.
In 1980, he made himself count in the field for a 200m match in the Moscow Olympics, where amid his strenuous quick strides, he landed in the quarterfinals. The 200m contest was not the only discipline that saw him performing and outdoing his rivals, rather,
he also became a part of the sprint relay squad that not only reached to the final of the event, but also marked a fourth finish in a new English record.
While his services for English athletics are countless, McFarlane particularly made Britain feel proud with his participation at the 1988 Summer Olympics, where he contested and won a silver medal in the 4x100m relay. McFarlane’s personal bests for 100m
and 200m stood at 10.22 and 20.43 seconds, respectively. After retiring from his professional career, he pursued a successful career in coaching. Presently, he is serving at the National Athletics Centre situated in Lee Valley.
Though as a coach, the success list for McFarlane is rather long, but two of the athletes that speak of his ability to transform raw talent into title winners are Jodie Williams and Desiree Henry. While Williams is a well-known figure now, Henry is a 15-year-old
girl who is a student in a London based school.
Henry’s performance on the track right from the gun made it pretty much visible that she had been benefitting from a technically sound trainer. For marking her dominance on the track, her emphatic strides stopped the clock in 23.25 seconds.
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