“I retired 18 months in the past and I used to be operating with my spouse at Motherwell AC and so they mentioned, ‘Why do not you begin teaching once more? We would like to have you ever at Motherwell AC’,” he reveals.
“The partnership shortly developed and really shortly they acquired me hooked and so they would not let me go.”
Given McKean’s achievements, it’s little marvel.
He burst on to the scene in 1986, taking Commonwealth Video games silver behind Cram and forward of one other proficient Englishman Peter Elliott.
Weeks later, he was a runner-up once more on the European Championships, gaining revenge on Cram however being edged out by Coe for gold.
McKean would lastly style gold – on the 1989 World Cup and the 1990 European indoor and out of doors championships, in addition to the 1993 World Indoors.
Police Scotland would then come calling, however now he’s having fun with giving one thing again to the game.
“Being a coach, I am making an attempt to create goals, ambitions and objectives for younger individuals – to set them on their means in life,” he says.
‘Life is hard for teenagers and they should take care of pleasure, disappointment, underachieving, over-achieving – and I feel we give them that in a protected atmosphere.”
McKean attracts on his personal profession to clarify why giving your greatest is what ought to matter in athletics.
“My recommendation is: if you happen to give 100% then you’ll be able to stroll off a monitor, or stroll off a cross-country race, or stroll off a coaching session and say ‘I’ve carried out one of the best I can’,” he says.
“Then, to me, you’ll be able to’t ask for any extra. As soon as I ran within the last of the European Championships and I completed second, however I could not have carried out something higher.
“I could not have run any faster, I could not have been in higher positions. I completed second as a result of Seb Coe beat me on the road. However I had given 100% and may have been proud of the consequence – and I used to be proud of the consequence.”