\n<\/p>\n
“I retired 18 months ago and I was running with my wife at Motherwell AC and they said, ‘Why don’t you start coaching again? We’d love to have you at Motherwell AC’,” he reveals.<\/p>\n
“The partnership quickly evolved and very quickly they got me hooked and they wouldn’t let me go.”<\/p>\n
Given McKean’s achievements, it is little wonder.<\/p>\n
He burst on to the scene in 1986, taking Commonwealth Games silver behind Cram and ahead of another talented Englishman Peter Elliott.<\/p>\n
Weeks later, he was a runner-up again at the European Championships, gaining revenge on Cram but being edged out by Coe for gold.<\/p>\n
McKean would finally taste gold – at the 1989 World Cup and the 1990 European indoor and outdoor championships, as well as the 1993 World Indoors.<\/p>\n
Police Scotland would then come calling, but now he is enjoying giving something back to the sport.<\/p>\n
“Being a coach, I’m trying to create dreams, ambitions and goals for young people – to set them on their way in life,” he says.<\/p>\n
‘Life is tough for kids and they need to deal with joy, disappointment, underachieving, over-achieving – and I think we give them that in a safe environment.”<\/p>\n
McKean draws on his own career to explain why giving your best is what should matter in athletics.<\/p>\n
“My advice is: if you give 100% then you can walk off a track, or walk off a cross-country race, or walk off a training session and say ‘I’ve done the best I can’,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Then, to me, you can’t ask for any more. Once I ran in the final of the European Championships and I finished second, but I couldn’t have done anything better.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t have run any quicker, I couldn’t have been in better positions. I finished second because Seb Coe beat me on the line. But I had given 100% and should have been happy with the result \u2013 and I was happy with the result.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n