He set a new British record at Gateshead 10.29, beating Don Quarrie and James Sanford, and also won the UK 100/200 Championships.

At the start of the 1980 season, Wells won the AAA's 100 metres, then went to the Côte d'Azur to finish preparing for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.

[6] In Moscow, Wells qualified for the final, with a new British record 10.11 s, where he faced pre-race favourite Silvio Leonard of Cuba.

The rest had done me a lot of good, I was really fresh and committed, and those starts gave me the psychological edge over everyone else, which was key because the Olympics is all about your mental aptitude.

Wells accepted an invitation to take on the best USA sprinters of the day, among others, the ASV Weltklasse track meeting in Cologne in West Germany.

Less than two weeks after the Moscow gold, he won the final in Cologne in a time of 10.19s, beating Americans Stanley Floyd (10.21), Mel Lattany (10.25), Carl Lewis (10.30) and Harvey Glance (10.31).

[citation needed] In 1981, after a tour of Australia and New Zealand, Wells won the European Cup 100 metres, beating East German Frank Emmelmann.

Afterwards, he beat Mel Lattany and Stanley Floyd again, when he won a 200 in 20.26 in the Memorial Van Damme meeting in Brussels, Belgium.

[citation needed] In 1982, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Wells won two more Commonwealth Games titles in the 100 m, a wind assisted 10.02. and then the 200 m, and a bronze medal in the relay.

[11] In 1983, he won his third European Cup title by winning the 200 metres in 20.72, beating his old adversary Pietro Mennea in London, and again took 2nd in the 100 m.[12] He then finished 4th in both the 100/200 sprint finals at the IAAF World Championships in Helsinki.

He and Don Quarrie and Pietro Mennea set a trend for sprinters in their mid thirties to compete longer in the late Eighties.

Allan coached the Bank of Scotland specialist sprint squad alongside another former Scottish sprinter, Ian Mackie.

He also ran a wind-assisted (+5.9 m/s) 10.02 in Brisbane, 1982 (still the track record as of August 2024 which he shares with Rohan Browning of Sydney, Australia from April 2023), and (+3.7 m/s) 20.11 in Edinburgh, 1980.

In June 2015, a BBC documentary (Panorama: Catch Me If You Can) uncovered allegations by Wells' former teammate of historical doping by the 1980 Olympic 100m champion, beginning in 1977.