Athletics: Rivals practised in art of getting on: Mike Rowbottom reports on Colin Jackson and Mark McKoy, the high hurdlers who do not let friendship get in the way

ATHLETES react in different ways to becoming Olympic champion. Some are arrogant. Some are relieved. Some are humble. Mark McKoy is apologetic.

Speaking after last month's AAA indoor championships in Birmingham, the Canadian glanced across a busy press room at the man who had finished six places behind him in the previous summer's Olympic 110 metres hurdles final, his training partner Colin Jackson.

'He's definitely the best hurdler in the world now,' McKoy said. 'But he was definitely the best hurdler in the world last year. He just made one mistake. I wouldn't have won the gold if I hadn't run with Colin. I owe him much more than just a medal. But I am Olympic champion. I live with the fact. I can't make myself into something I'm not.'

Seven months on from Barcelona, the world indoor championships this weekend in McKoy's home city of Toronto offer Jackson another chance to justify his status as the best in the world. The Welshman heads the current 60m hurdles rankings, but in order to win gold he will have to hold off the challenge of McKoy, who in Karlsruhe last weekend ran 7.46sec to Jackson's 7.44 to establish himself as second in this year's list.

Part of the apparent weight on McKoy's conscience derives from the fact that until Jackson and his coach Malcolm Arnold intervened just over three years ago, he was contemplating retirement. Having left the 1988 Olympic village without permission in the wake of the Ben Johnson affair, which caused him to miss the sprint relay, McKoy was banned from the Canadian team for two years and from all competition for one. He later admitted taking steroids as part of Johnson's training group under Charlie Francis, who was subsequently banned from coaching for life.

As McKoy languished back home in Toronto, there occurred a transforming coincidence of the kind that Thomas Hardy would have relished, although the change of circumstance was far more beneficial than those which the novelist habitually inflicted upon his characters.

Jackson's sister, the actress Suzanne Parker, went to work in Canada and her brother arranged for her to stay with McKoy, who was an old acquaintance from the days of junior competitions. Jackson also sent the Canadian an open invitation to stay and train with him in Cardiff. The offer was taken up more than once; indeed, in the months leading up to the 1992 Olympics, McKoy, his wife and baby girl all stayed in Jackson's Cardiff home.

It is a rare thing indeed to find two outstanding athletes in the same event who are so close. Both men describe the other as being like a brother. When Jackson, the favourite, clattered through the final hurdle in Barcelona and staggered over the line in seventh place, McKoy was waiting to embrace him as much in pain as pleasure.

There was surprise in the Canadian's features, too; amazement, even. Before the Olympics, while preparing in Monte Carlo, it had seemed clear that the Welshman had the beating of him. 'By the sixth hurdle, he was always ahead of me, and it stayed that way,' McKoy said. 'Everything went perfectly according to plan for me in Barcelona. I knew I could run around 13.1. But Colin was supposed to finish half a yard ahead of me. I would have been very happy with a silver behind him. When he ran 13.10sec slowing down in the opening round, it was 'game over'. If I had thought I had a chance of winning, it would have blown my mind. But I was so focused on being second that it didn't faze me.'

Just one mistake. Hampered by a rib cartilage injury from the second round, Jackson hit four hurdles in the final. It was a disappointment to dwarf even that of the previous year, when he had had to pull out before the world championship semi-final because of a back injury.

For Arnold, who had coached John Akii-Bua of Uganda to Olympic victory 20 years earlier in the 400m hurdles, the moment was extraordinarily mixed. The man he had trained for 10 years had failed; the man he had taken on late - despite the whispers of those who disapproved of the Canadian's past - had succeeded.

'Some people had condemned me without having the courage to say anything to my face,' Arnold said. 'I didn't seek any assurances from Mark when he first came. But I know when athletes are up to something, and he's back on the straight and narrow. In the present system it's very easy to condemn people. Perhaps my ethics are a little more Christian. Forgiveness is an important aspect.

'I didn't know whether to laugh or cry after the finish,' he said. 'There wasn't much to be said right then - just well done to Mark and bad luck to Col. I don't know how much Colin's rib injury contributed, but defeat hurt him inside and still hurts him now. It will dog him for the rest of his days. The most impressive thing to me, though, was that the following day he was bright and breezy and ready to get on with things again.'

Jackson's immediate return to the kind of form which had established him as the world's leading high hurdler may have reassured his coach, but it prompted several observers to assert that he had a tendency to fail on the big occasion through lack of nerve.

Such an analysis ignored the fact that Jackson had already won an Olympic silver medal, and both the Commonwealth and European titles - the latter with a heavily bandaged thigh. Arnold tries to be philosophical about this assessment; he points out with grim humour that the bandage Jackson wore in Split three years ago was described by one journalist as a ready-made excuse for defeat.

'After Barcelona, I told Colin that what he had experienced would make a better athlete of him,' Arnold said. There have certainly been none better thus far into the season, but Arnold counsels caution. 'Everyone has been saying that Colin is bound to win in Toronto. But in sport, things just don't happen that way. I've told Colin that you are at your most vulnerable when you are successful. I can see the same scenario as Barcelona building again.'

Should McKoy steal another victory over his friend, he can afford to be a little less apologetic. Whatever the result in Toronto, their friendship will endure.

(Photograph omitted)