He was one of the greatest American hurdlers of the 1980s and 1990s. Former 110m hurdles champion Greg Foster died on Sunday in Maywood in the suburbs of Chicago, at the age of 64. In 2020, he underwent a heart transplant following amyloidosis which he was diagnosed with in 2016 and after undergoing chemotherapy.
He belonged to that generation of American sprinters who jostled and marched into the call rooms. Foster appears at the highest level by winning the final of the American University Championships in 1978 with a time of 13′’22, the best performance of the year and one hundredth of the world record. Following a linear progression, he won the first world championship title in the 110m hurdles in Helsinki in 1983, then retained his title in Rome in 1987 and again four years later in Tokyo. He even added a 4th indoor planetary crown over 60m hurdles in 1991.
The American athlete, on the other hand, was cursed on the Olympic stage. At the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, when he set the four best times of the year and was undefeated for a year and a half, he finished 2nd, 3 hundredths from Roger Kingdom due to a bad start. . Four years later in Seoul, just before the American selections, Greg Foster broke his arm attempting an interception during a basketball game. He nevertheless took the start of these American selections with an imposing cast but did not go beyond the semi-finals. And finally, in Barcelona in 1992, he was injured and finished 4th in the US selections. His career will be tarnished by a positive test for ephedrine in 1990, which will earn him a three-month suspension. He ended his athletic career at the end of the 1996 season before being elected to the United States Athletics Hall of Fame in 1998.