Worldclass hardware: Avard Moncur, masters program manager in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering earned multiple medals as an international track and field superstar. — Jerry Grillo Photo
By Jerry Grillo
Avard Moncur’s road to Olympics glory began in 30-meter intervals, the distance between light poles where he grew up on the island of Nassau in the Bahamas.
He had an elementary school teacher who became his high school coach, Diane Thompson. She recognized the kid’s potential and invited him to join the new track club she was starting. But Moncur’s family didn’t always have a car, and unless he could bum a ride, getting to training sessions was impossible. So, he ran light poles.
“Diane was an amazing and resourceful woman who knew that I always loved to run,” Moncur said about his mentor, who died in 2006. “She gave me a training regimen I could do at home. She said, ‘It’s 30 meters between light poles; three of them is almost 100 meters.’ That changed everything.”
Each trip he took to the grocery store for his mother became an interval training session.
“When I showed up at practice, the other athletes wondered how I was in such great shape, and how I’d gotten so fast,” said Moncur, a former world champion sprinter in the 400 meters and 4x400 meter relay, who now helps college graduate students reach their potential as Master’s Program Manager in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.
By the time Moncur was 17 and winning competitions among Caribbean countries, nobody wondered any more. College competition and coaching
— first at Morehouse in Atlanta and particularly later at Auburn University under coaches Ralph Spry, Mel Rosen, and Henry Rolle — propelled him into the international spotlight.
“College was the perfect framework for me — the coaching expertise, the athletic training, recovery modalities. The only things I had to think about was going to school and training,” Moncur said. “When I think back on it, those were the most sensible years of my life, when it came to preparation. It was just amazing.”
He won two straight NCAA Division I championships for Auburn in the 400 meters, in 2000 and 2001 (posting a school record time in 2000 that lasted 18 years). But it might have been a race he lost during the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney that had the most profound effect on his career ahead.
Learning to Be Fearless
With the 2024 Olympics now moving at full stride in Paris, Moncur thinks back on some of his first impressions of the 2000 Games in Sydney, and what he remembers clearly are the spectators.
“They looked like dots. There were so many in the stands, and they looked so small and far away,” he said. “Maybe it was my focus on the competition ahead. But, coming from the Bahamas and my training — running to the store and using the light poles — I couldn’t have imagined it would culminate in something this big. It was surreal.”
But he was quickly brought down to Earth. During the quarterfinals of the 400 meters he was in the lane next to Michael Johnson, one of his boyhood heroes, the American sprinter who won four Olympic gold medals (among other championships), setting world records along the way.
Avard Moncur competes in the 2000 Olympics.
“He was someone I always looked up to, so this was the ultimate experience for me,” said Moncur, who finished in a tie for second in the quarterfinals, about a tenth of a second behind Johnson (who would later win the gold medal). “After that, I just had tons of confidence — I had run a good race against the best in the world. I felt fearless. The mindset I developed led to some of my greatest successes later.”
Moncur was part of the Bahamian 4x400 meter team that won a belated Bronze Medal in Sydney (the winning U.S. team was later disqualified, moving the Bahamian team from fourth up to third place). Then he took an individual gold medal in the 400 at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton, Canada, beating several other Olympians in the finals (including Greg Haughton, the Jamaican who won a Bronze medal in Sydney). That would be his last gold medal in the 400 until the 2007 Pan American Games.
But he was part of the Bahamas’ gold medal winning 4x400 meter relay team at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton and helped his country win silver medals in the same event at the 2005 Championships in Helsinki, Finland, and the 2007 Championships in Osaka, Japan. In 2008, Moncur had his last great Olympics moment, helping the Bahamian 4x400 team take the silver medal in Beijing.
He competed on the professional international circuit for several more years, but didn’t make the Olympics for 2012, when the Bahamas won gold in the 4x400 relay.
From Competitor to Fan
When he looks at clips of himself on YouTube, running anchor leg for Auburn’s relay team 20-something years ago, Moncur said, “I can see how tunnel-visioned I was, how focused, and it’s almost unbelievable that I did all that.”
On the other hand, when he watches a race now, he gets swept into the action. He can almost feel it. After almost years of competing on an international level (Moncur retired from athletics in 2012 when he was 34), that doesn’t just go away. Others can see it in him.
“The work ethic, the sense of patriotism, the keen sense of technical optimization to squeeze that last bit of performance,” is how Cassie Mitchell
described Moncur's competitive style. An assistant professor in the Coulter Department, she was also describing herself — Mitchell has won multiple medals in international competition as a track and field para-athlete and recently qualified for her fourth Paralympic Games (Aug. 28-Sept. 8, in Paris).
“Those traits transition well to the academic world and our roles at Georgia Tech,” Mitchell added. “Avard may be one of the most responsive and efficient colleagues I’ve worked with.”
Moncur, 45, recently took on his new role in the Coulter Department, which makes him responsible for managing the popular Master of Biomedical Innovation and Development (MBID) program. That means he’ll be handling course logistics, scheduling, admissions and recruitment, and student advising. “Among other things,” he added. “What I know is, I love working with students.”
It's not too far afield from coaching, something Moncur did for years after he retired as an athlete. He’s taken a break from private coaching lately to focus more on this new chapter of his professional life.
Now, he stays involved with track and field as a fan, and he has a few favorite athletes that he’s keeping his eye on during the Paris Games — for example, American hurdler and sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (she’s the first track athlete to break four world records in the same event, the 400 hurdles), and Bahamian Steven Gardiner, defending Olympics champion in the 400.
“After retiring from competition, there were years when I was away from it, but now I’m a such a huge fan of track and field, watch it every chance I get,” Moncur said. “And you know what? I can still connect with the action on the track, with the athletes. I still feel very much a part of it.”
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