Foster only placed fourth in the 1978 European Athletics Championships 10,000-metre race, but he ran faster than any 10,000-metre European Champion has run ever since (see various European countries' books about the European Athletics Championships from 1982 to 2006). Foster finished fifth in the 1976 Olympics 5,000-metre final, just 1.4 seconds behind the winner, Lasse Viren of Finland. Foster lost all his three Olympic races against Viren – 5,000 and 10,000 m in 1976 and 10,000 m in 1980. In the preliminaries to the 1976 5,000 m race he broke Viren's Olympic record running 13:20.34. That record would hold through the final until it was surpassed in the final of the 1984 Olympics.