Michael Johnson (sprinter)

Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson at the 2000 Summer Olympics
Medal record
Men's Athletics
Representing the United States
Olympic Games
	1992 Barcelona	4 x 400 m relay*
	1996 Atlanta	200 m
	1996 Atlanta	400 m
	2000 Sydney	400 m
World Championships
	1991 Tokyo	200 m
	1993 Stuttgart	400 m
	1993 Stuttgart	4 x 400 m relay
	1995 Gothenburg	200 m
	1995 Gothenburg	400 m
	1995 Gothenburg	4 x 400 m relay
	1997 Athens	400 m
	1999 Seville	400 m
	1999 Seville	4 x 400 m relay

Michael Duane Johnson (born September 13, 1967 in Dallas, Texas) is a retired United States sprinter who holds the world record in the 400 m. He also has run the fastest 300 meters of all time, an event not recognized by the IAAF as an official world record. He won four Olympic gold medals and was crowned world champion nine times.

He is the only male sprint athlete in history to win both the 200 m and 400 m events at the same Olympics, a feat he accomplished at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Johnson is the only man to successfully defend his Olympic title in the 400 m.

Johnson was noted for his unique running style. His upright stance and very short steps defied the perceived wisdom that a high knee lift was essential for maximum speed.

Early life and career

Johnson was born and raised in Dallas as the youngest of five children, and attended Skyline High School and Baylor University. At Baylor, Johnson was coached by Clyde Hart, and he won several NCAA titles in both indoor and outdoor sprints and relays. He prepared for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, but developed a stress fracture of his left fibula before the U.S. Olympic Trials began. He did not qualify in the 400 m and he withdrew from the 200 m.

Johnson graduated from Baylor in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in business, as the first athlete ever to hold the number one world ranking in both the 200 m and the 400 m. In 1991, he won the world 200 m title in Tokyo by the largest margin of victory since Jesse Owens won the event in the 1936 Summer Olympics.

Two weeks before the 1992 Summer Olympics began, Johnson and his agent both contracted food poisoning at a restaurant in Spain. Johnson lost both weight and strength. He was the favorite to win the 200 m going into the Olympics, but he could do no better than sixth in his semifinal heat, and failed to reach the 200 m final. Nevertheless, he was able to race as a member of the 4 x 400 m relay team, which won a gold medal and set a new world record time of 2:55.74.

He won the 1993 U.S. title in the 400 m, and followed it with world titles in both the 400 m and 4 x 400 m relay. His 42.94 second split time in the 4 x 400 relay remains the fastest 400 meters in history. At the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, Johnson won his first 200 m and 400 m "double." No elite-level male track athlete had accomplished this in a major meet in the 20th century.

Atlanta Olympics

In 1996, Johnson ran 19.66 seconds in the 200 m at the U.S. Olympic Trials, breaking Pietro Mennea's record of 19.72 seconds, which had stood for 17 years. With that performance he qualified to run at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and prepared to attempt to win both the 200 meters and 400 meters events, a feat never before achieved by a male athlete. (Two women have won Olympic gold medals in both races in the same year: Valerie Brisco-Hooks in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and Marie-José Perec, in the same 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.)

Johnson entered the Olympic finals donning a custom-designed pair of gold-colored Nike racing spikes made with Zytel, causing him to be nicknamed "The Man With the Golden Shoes." Sources differ on the exact weight of these shoes; the manufacturer of the spikes claims they weighed 3 ounces (85 g) each, while other sources state each shoe weighed about 94 grams (3.3 oz). The left shoe was a US size 10.5 while the right shoe was a US size 11, to account for Johnson's shorter left foot.

On July 29, Johnson easily captured the 400 m Olympic title with a time of 43.49 seconds, almost one full second ahead of silver medalist Roger Black of Great Britain. At the 200 m final on August 1, Johnson ran the opening 100 meters in 10.12 seconds and achieved a peak speed of over 40 kilometres per hour (25 mph). He finished the race in a world record time of 19.32 seconds, shattering the previous record he had set in the U.S. Olympic Trials - the largest improvement ever on a 200 m world record. Some commentators compared the performance to Bob Beamon's record-shattering long jump at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. His 200 m world and Olympic record has since been broken, by Usain Bolt, at the 2008 Summer Olympics, running 19.31 into a headwind, corrected to 19.30 seconds.

After the 1996 season ended, Johnson received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in any sport in the United States, and was named ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year. In August, HarperCollins published his biographical/motivational book, Slaying the Dragon: How to Turn Your Small Steps to Great Feats.

The world's fastest man

In 1997 Johnson began appearing in television advertisements in which he was billed as "the world's fastest man" as a result of his 200 m world record, despite the fact that the 100 metres world record holder, at the time Canadian Donovan Bailey, was typically given that unofficial title.

In a publicity stunt in June 1997, he raced against Bailey in a 150-metre (164 yd) race at the Rogers Centre (then SkyDome) in Toronto. The event was unsanctioned, and its unique course consisted of 75 meters of curving track and 75 meters of straight track. The race was billed as a competition for the title of "World's Fastest Man." It failed to live up to expectations when Johnson pulled up with an injured quadricep while Bailey had the lead at the halfway mark. Bailey easily won the race and the $1.5 million prize that came with the victory. There is video footage of Bailey during an interview shortly thereafter, clearly annoyed at Johnson's pull up, with Bailey saying "He didn't pull up, he's just a chicken... I think we should run this race again so I could whip his ass one more time." That same year, Johnson won his third 400 m world title in Athens.

Later career

At the 1998 Goodwill Games in New York, Johnson anchored the U.S. 4 x 400 m relay team with Jerome Young, Antonio Pettigrew, and Tyree Washington to a win and set the current world record of 2:54.20. Pettigrew has since admitted doping from 1997, while Young was caught doping in 1999.

Johnson was plagued by injury in 1999, and his following season was troubled with two injury scares that limited him to just four 400 m races before the 1999 World Championships in Seville. Were it not for an IAAF policy that allowed automatic entry to defending champions, he could not have raced in Seville since he failed to compete in the U.S. trials due to his injury. He recovered and won his fourth 400 meter world title with a new world record time of 43.18 seconds. He later ran the last leg of the 4 x 400 m relay for the ninth World Championship gold medal in his collection.

After qualifying for the 2000 Summer Olympics in the 400 m at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Johnson injured himself in the 200 m final while racing in a highly anticipated matchup against the 100 m and 200 m world champion, Maurice Greene. The injury prevented a defense to his 200 m Olympic title.

Johnson ended his career at the 2000 Summer Olympics by winning gold medals in the 400 m and the 4 x 400 m relay, which brought his total number of Olympic gold medals to five. Johnson has run 200 m under 19.80 seconds six times, and he has run the distance in less than 20 seconds 23 times. He holds 9 of the top 50 200 m performances of all time. Johnson has run 22 400 m races in under 44 seconds; he holds 22 of the top 50 and 5 of the top 10 400 m performances of all time.

After athletics

Since retiring from competitive track, Johnson has worked as a television commentator, often for the BBC in the United Kingdom, where he also writes a column for the Daily Telegraph. He also has served as the agent for Jeremy Wariner, who won the gold medal in the 400 m at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Wariner, like Johnson, ran collegiately at Baylor University for coach Clyde Hart, and Johnson serves as a consultant for Baylor's track athletes. He was elected to the United States Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2004, where his 200 m performance at the 1996 Olympics was named the greatest track and field moment of the last 25 years.

In June 2008, Johnson voluntarily returned the 4 x 400 m relay gold medal he earned in the 2000 Olympics after Antonio Pettigrew, who ran the second leg, admitted he took performance enhancing drugs between 1997 and 2001. Pettigrew made his admission while giving testimony in the trial of coach Trevor Graham for his role in the BALCO scandal. On August 2, 2008, the International Olympic Committee stripped the gold medal from the U.S. men's 4x400-meter relay team. Three of the four runners in the event final, including Pettigrew and twins Alvin and Calvin Harrison, and preliminary round runner Jerome Young, all have admitted or tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. Only Johnson and Angelo Taylor, who also ran in preliminary rounds, were not implicated. Johnson stated he had already planned to return the medal because he felt "cheated, betrayed and let down" by Pettigrew's testimony.

Johnson currently lives in Mill Valley, California, with his wife Kerry, and their son Sebastian.

Personal bests

Date	Event	Venue	Time
June 15, 1994	100 m	Knoxville, Tennessee	10.09
August 1, 1996	200 m	Atlanta, Georgia	19.32
March 24, 2000	300 m	Pretoria, South Africa	30.85 WB
March 4, 1995	400 m Indoor	Atlanta, Georgia	44.63
August 26, 1999	400 m	Seville, Spain	43.18

Achievements

Year	Meeting	Venue	Result	Event
1990	Goodwill Games	Seattle, Washington	1st	200 m
1991	IAAF / Mobil Grand Prix Final	Barcelona, Spain	1st	200 m
1991	IAAF World Championships	Tokyo, Japan	1st	200 m
1992	1992 Summer Olympics	Barcelona, Spain	1st	4 x 400 m Relay
1993	IAAF / Mobil Grand Prix Final	London, Great Britain	3rd	200 m
1993	IAAF World Championships	Stuttgart, Germany	1st	4 x 400 m Relay
1993	IAAF World Championships	Stuttgart, Germany	1st	400 m
1994	Goodwill Games	St. Petersburg, Russia	1st	200 m
1995	IAAF / Mobil Grand Prix Final	Monaco	1st	200 m
1995	IAAF World Championships	Gothenburg, Sweden	1st	4 x 400 m Relay
1995	IAAF World Championships	Gothenburg, Sweden	1st	200 m
1995	IAAF World Championships	Gothenburg, Sweden	1st	400 m
1996	1996 Summer Olympics	Atlanta, Georgia	1st	200 m
1996	1996 Summer Olympics	Atlanta, Georgia	1st	400 m
1997	IAAF World Championships	Athens, Greece	1st	400 m
1998	Goodwill Games	New York City, New York	1st	400 m
1999	IAAF World Championships	Sevilla, Spain	1st	4 x 400 m Relay
1999	IAAF World Championships	Sevilla, Spain	1st	400 m
2000	U.S. Olympic Trials	Sacramento, California	1st	400 m
2000	2000 Summer Olympics	Sydney, Australia	1st	400 m

External links

• Profile by International Olympic Committee

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