He never lets down a team which is curious because he doesn’t enjoy relays especially the 4 x 400

He never lets down a team, which is curious because he doesn’t enjoy relays (especially the 4 x 400 for which he holds the fastest split time ever achieved by a Briton, 43.93sec). He dislikes relays for the same reason that he gave up football after being good enough as a powerful forward, then midfield player for trials with Arsenal, Charlton and Newcastle. He felt that no matter how well he played he was always at the mercy of the rest His other problem was that he set his sights slightly high. “I wanted to be as good as Pel”; but in reality he was not as good as his cousin Cyrille.Football, he says, became boring. “I sometimes wonder whether I might have made it, but why play out of your skin and lose 6-2. Athletics is always down to me.” He admits that for a while as a teenager he had a bit of the professional footballer’s outlook on life – play hard, live harder. “It wasn’t anything outrageous; I just enjoyed the partying.” He still loves expensive cars and clothes.None of the football clubs could work out how they would capitalise on his obvious strength and rugged skills, so he decided that it was time to impose some self-discipline.

He came to the conclusion that the only thing all the clubs seemed agreed on was that he could run like the wind, storm past 100m and keep going Not that he enjoys keeping going any further than 200m “I took to the 200 because you can’t do it all flat out You have to think the race as well Anything over 200 metres and it starts to hurt. I’m not into that.”A long time ago he admitted to himself that the other reason why he abandoned football and took up the comparatively lonely life of a full-time athlete was because he was uneasy about pressure. So when he became good at his new sport and the spotlight was focused on him alone, he almost yearned for the time when he could perform indifferently and hide in the anonymity of a team game. He realised that the reason why he began to miss out on the big prizes was because he had an “instinct” to panic.Regis and an American chiropractor, Dr Michael Greenberg, who tackles the psychology of athletes as a sideline, have long been working on his “instinct” problem. It was a damaging instinct that left Regis a supporting artist on the days when Christie, Sally Gunnell and Colin Jackson were centre-stage and all of them seemed so good at rising above the pressure.Regis is of the generation that was inspired to take up athletics by the winning performances of Seb Coe and Steve Ovett, and after so many years in the sport he says he is not going anywhere in 1995 “just to finish second”.His preparation has not involved as much chasing the sun as has that of the other British stars, but three weeks in Lanzarote sharpened him up sufficiently to set a good indoor mark of 20.65sec in the Britain v Russia match in Birmingham, where he returns on Saturday for an invitation meeting. If he fails today, he will be having another go at that world record nearer home, perhaps with Christie to give him some competition.His preparation for the world indoor championships involves eight appearances at various venues around Europe, but only by beating Fredericks will he feel ready.

At last summer’s Commonwealth Games in Canada, the Namibian won the gold medal at a time when Regis was still suffering slightly from an Achilles tendon injury that had caused him to miss the European championships in Helsinki the same summer Then in the final he felt a twinge of a groin strain. That, he said, was pretty mean of fate because earlier in the season he had beaten Fredericks in Sestrire, where he set what was then a British record of 19.87sec.He admitted that his body just seemed to be cracking up. Six months later he seems to have put it together again and last weekend this speeding human juggernaut looked in even more formidable shape. When mind, body and high-quality opposition all come together, something in the record book has to give..