On the eve of the 2003 World Championships in Paris, Michael Johnson was asked in an interview with The Independent to name a participating athlete in whom he truly believed. After some deliberation his considered answer was ‘nobody,’ a statement justified in his eyes by the fact that too many of the competitors, including many sprinters following in his esteemed footsteps, lacked credibility having failed to deliver on boastful projections of personal glory.
Delivering the goods under pressure; it is a characteristic which Johnson has always held in high regard and the one of which he is most proud when looking back on his own glittering career. “I think the biggest compliment is when people recognise my consistency and longevity over eleven years and three different Olympics,” he told Sport.co.uk in an exclusive interview. “Obviously all of the championship wins, gold medals and world records are important individually, but from my perspective I’m most proud when people recognise the consistency.”
With eight World Championship titles, four Olympic gold medals and world record times for both the 200 and 400 metre disciplines it’s hard to argue with his assessment. The Texan was not only hailed as a living legend during his sprint career, but thanks to his distinctive upright running style and an ostentatious pair of gold shoes worn at the Atlanta Games of 1996, one worthy of iconic status.
Time Magazine front cover - 1996
While acknowledging his natural ability on the track, it is obvious that both humility and steely determination, rather than the courting of public admiration, formed the nucleus of Johnson’s accomplishments. “I don’t really get caught up in the praise or what other people say about my career. My motivation to get out there and do what I did was all based on my own personal goals. From a general standpoint it’s great for people to recognise and compliment my achievements but it was never my objective to live by their words.”
Bouncing back
Of course it could have been so different had Johnson not overcome the disappointment of a fibula stress fracture which ruined his chances of competing in Seoul in 1988, and an ill-timed bout of food poisoning sustained in Barcelona during the 1992 Games which drained him so much that he failed to qualify for the 200 metre final. While a gold medal in the 4 x 400 metre relay came as consolation in the Catalan capital, Johnson maintains that keeping a level head in the face of such setbacks was another key to later success.
“I think once you get involved with sports you understand that there are going to be injuries and you’re not always going to be able to get out on the field, the track, the court. Before 1992 I certainly knew examples and was aware of athletes who had had great careers and never been able to put it all together on the day. Obviously it was a huge disappointment but I wouldn’t say it was a driving force throughout the rest of my career.”
So what did keep him motivated in the long wait between Barcelona and the arrival of the Olympics on home soil? “When you’re competing at Olympic level you recognise that it only comes along every four years and you have to be ready on the day. For the four years between 1992 and 1996 my driving force was to be the best that I could be, to triumph at World Championships, to break world records and to win races.”
Johnson could not have been in better form when his chance to impress at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Stadium finally came around. He had become the first man ever to win both the 200 and 400 metre gold medals at the World Championships in Gothenburg in 1995 and further bolstered his sprint credentials by clocking 19.66 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials, breaking Pietro Mennea's record of 19.72 seconds, which had stood for 17 years. “In Atlanta I was seeking to be the face of the Olympics and to show people what I could do,” he recollects.
Johnson didn’t disappoint - he was not just the face, but with a little help from sports brand Nike, also the feet of the Games. For a man who knew he produced his best form under pressure it was perhaps little surprise that he opted to sport gold spikes as he stormed to sensational victories in the 400 metres on July 29th and 200 metres on August 1st. You don’t wear gold unless you want attention and you certainly don’t wear gold unless you’re going to win; just as well then that he shaved another three tenths of a second off his own world record in the latter.
“I was the one who made the decision to make the shoes gold,” he confirms. “It was a great project to work on; the whole thing was really about the technology behind the shoes which we had worked on for a year. The last decision was what colour they were going to be and that took me about a minute!” It’s a measure of the man that despite such a flamboyant act his choice has never been viewed as arrogant.
Golden boy
Gold continued to be Johnson’s trademark in the years after his Atlanta double although fitness problems increasingly hampered his ability to perform as regularly as he would have liked. Despite two further World Championship golds in Athens and Seville – the latter at 400 metre world record speed – his much anticipated “World's Fastest Man” showdown with reigning 100 metre Olympic champion Donovan Bailey saw him disappointingly pull up with a hamstring strain. A further injury sustained in qualification for the 200 metres in Sydney left him unable to defend his title in 2000 although he did, at the age of 33, travel to Australia in the hope of retaining his 400 metre crown.
Having coasted through the first three rounds without raising a sweat, the result of the final never looked in doubt. And so it came to be. With upright carriage and legs pumping furiously, the ‘man with the golden shoes’ cut an extraordinary figure as he stormed to victory in the final in a time of 43.84 seconds well clear of US teammate Alvin Harrison. It was a fitting finale for what proved to be his Olympic swansong.
Golden boy on his Sydney swansong
It’s hard to believe that ten years have already passed since ‘Superman’ retired and even harder to fathom that his era-defining records are not only under threat, but in the case of the 19.32 second time clocked for the 200 metres, already confined to the history books. Elected to the United States Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2004, his Atlanta world record was heralded as the greatest track and field achievement of the last 25 years. Few could have foreseen that within four years the time would be beaten not once, but twice by the same man – Usain Bolt. Is Johnson bitter? Not in the slightest.
“The whole thing with records is that it's all about that moment,” he is on the record as saying. “If someone breaks my records it's not going to diminish my career achievements. It's over for me now." Such a considered outlook has allowed Johnson to watch on astonished, like the rest of the world, at the endeavors of his Jamaican successor, someone who unlike the assembled athletes of Paris 2003, he does believe in.
Lightning Bolt
Bolt’s record for the 200 metres currently stands at 19.19 seconds, set at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, but it is the Jamaican’s exploits in the blue riband 100 metre event and specifically the manner in which he blew away his rivals at the Beijing Games that Johnson believes to be the most amazing feat he has ever had the privilege of seeing.
“I would have to say that Usain Bolt’s 100 metre performance at the Beijing Olympics was the most amazing performance by far from a track and field standpoint and even probably from an overall sporting standpoint. I certainly have never seen anything like it during my life, it was an amazing performance.”
Has anything else compared before or after? “I don’t think so,” Johnson continues, “It takes more than just physical ability to become as great an athlete as Usain Bolt. It only happens every fifteen years or so that someone like him, or like a Carl Lewis, or myself comes along and starts to rewrite the rules and make people think differently about what they previously thought was possible.”
So in addition to himself, Lewis and Bolt, who else makes the list of top five sprinters of all time? “You’d have to put Jesse Owens at the top of that list. After that I think probably Tommie Smith who won the 200 metre Olympic gold in 1968. He was a great, great 400 metre runner as well and actually broke the world record in that event at one point.”
The new kid on the block
While heroes of athletics will always be remembered by name, the sport’s villains, in the shape of its myriad dope fiends, are best forgotten. So how does Johnson feel about those individuals who have shamed his sport; the men and women who have chosen to cheat by taking drugs to enhance their performance?
“An athlete has a choice to cheat or not to cheat. When you cheat the victims are other athletes,” he states with conviction. “I know athletes who when they look back at their careers realise that if they take out all the rivals who have since tested positive for drugs would have achieved tremendously more than they were allowed to. Those guys are victims and athletes are aware of that.
“There have been so many athletes who have been elevated to different colour medals or from fourth to bronze medal positions and were robbed of that joyous moment standing on the podium at an Olympics or World Championship. I think most athletes fully understand the problems caused by cheats and I don’t think they can forget those who do. I don’t think it is possible.”
Johnson and the 4x400 metre relay medal that he handed back
If it weren’t for the doping offences of relay teammates at the Sydney Olympics Johnson would himself be the owner of a further Olympic gold. In June 2008 he voluntarily gave up his 4x400 metre relay medal from the 2000 Games, a month before a formal IOC ruling, following a long-running saga, stripped the team of their title. The decision certainly represented a black mark against an unblemished record which had up to that point managed to sidestep such controversies. Has he been able to look the guilty parties in the eye ever since? The retort is as simple and straightforward as you’d expect from someone who has been incredibly outspoken on the subject of drugs in sport.
“We didn’t train together, we didn’t live together, we didn’t talk on the phone and we didn’t have a personal relationship. It’s a sport for individuals and you spend most of the year competing against these guys. Every relay member I’ve ever competed with, I’ve never invited home. I wouldn’t want people to get confused and think that I lost friendships, because I never had those personal relationships beforehand.”
The perfect pundit
It is an insight bristling with integrity, the likes of which UK audiences have become familiar over the last decade. Since hanging up his golden shoes Johnson has cut a stellar figure in the world of British broadcast and print journalism working simultaneously for the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and more recently The Times. It seems, on paper anyway, an unusual choice to leave behind the glamour, glitz and lucrative financial terms tabled by U.S. television networks to sit with the Beeb’s Hazel Irvine, Clare Balding and company. But on closer inspection, as always, there is good reason.
“I think the initial attraction is that track and field is a much more prominent sport in Great Britain than it is in the United States and far more appreciated. Working in London has allowed me to keep in touch with the sport as well as develop my skills as a pundit. I love athletics, I love being able to stay close but this work has also helped me develop a confidence talking about other sports and topics outside of my usual area of expertise.
“I like it in Great Britain, it’s a great country. I love the culture, I love the people – it really is one of the truly global and most diverse cities of the world. That is an attraction for me; it’s a win-win.”
It always comes back to winning with Michael Johnson and why not, after all he’s very good at it.