Johnson, Michael (1967—)

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Johnson, Michael (1967—)

The unique convergence of spectacular achievement, special time and place, and creative image allows certain athletes to make indelible impressions on the popular mind. Michael Johnson exempli-fies this phenomenon—his name evokes memories of an unprecedented accomplishment in track and field, the 1996 Olympic Summer Games at Atlanta, and golden running shoes. Few athletes have more consciously planned their moment of greatest triumph than did Johnson. Deprived of individual achievement in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona by illness and aware of the American public's relative disinterest in track and field, he relentlessly determined that he would make the Atlanta Olympics uniquely his own. He resolved to win both the 200 and the 400 meter races in Atlanta, something that had never been attempted in the Olympics, and to do so while wearing golden shoes. The pre-Olympic pressure on Johnson was enormous, with the media nominating him in advance as the star of the Atlanta games. Spectacularly fulfilling his own and others' expectations, he first won the 400 meters easily, literally running away from the rest of the field. Three days later, he won the 200 meters in the astonishing world-record time of 19.32 seconds. At the age of twenty-nine, Johnson was unquestionably the dominant figure in international track and field.

Even before Atlanta, he had established an impressive record as a sprinter. In the 1995 World Championship meet held in Goteborg, Sweden, he previewed his Atlanta performance by completing the 200-400 double and won a third gold medal by anchoring the winning United States 4 x 400 meter relay team. He had previously won three World Championship gold metals (individually the 200 meters in 1991 and the 400 meters in 1993 and as the anchor of the U.S. 4 x 400 meter relay team in 1993). Nevertheless in a sport that traditionally valorizes youth, Johnson had been something of a slow starter. A native of Dallas, he never won a Texas state high school running championship.

Born on September 13, 1967, Johnson is the son of a truck driver and an elementary school teacher. His father, Paul Johnson Sr., determined that his five children would obtain college degrees and began teaching them early the virtues of planning and dedication. All five children did in fact earn degrees, and son Michael proved to be an especially receptive student of his father's lessons. As an adult, Michael leads a rigidly compartmentalized life and has been described by friends and rivals as being virtually inhuman in his concentration and dedication on immediate tasks and challenges. Michael attended Skyline High School in Dallas where, an obviously gifted athlete, he surprised people by participating in track rather than football. Upon graduation, he was recruited by Baylor University's track and field coach Clyde Hart, primarily to fill out Hart's successful relay teams. Under Hart's tutelage, Johnson's potential as a sprinter began to manifest itself quickly, though injuries kept him from recording the collegiate record that he might have (he did win the NCAA 200 meter championship in 1989 and 1990 and the NCAA outdoor 200 meter title in 1990).

After graduation from Baylor, Johnson's running achievements became more and more spectacular until they culminated in the Atlanta Olympics. In between though, there was Barcelona. Going into the 1992 Olympics, Johnson was viewed as the meet's most certain individual winner, but he contacted food poisoning and failed to qualify for the finals in either of his events. He did, however, win his first Olympic gold medal as a member of the U.S. 4 x 400 relay team. After Barcelona his determination began to pay off even before Atlanta. Between 1992 and 1996, he was virtually unbeatable; and between 1989 and 1997 he won an amazing fifty-eight consecutive 400 meter finals. Beginning in 1993, awards began to pour in for Johnson, climaxing in 1996 when he received the Sullivan Award as U.S. amateur athlete of the year and the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year Award.

Since Atlanta, Johnson's career, because of recurring injuries, has been less than spectacular. The biggest damage to his golden image was truly unnecessary. Johnson agreed to an exhibition race on June 1, 1997 with Olympic 100 meter champion Donovan Bailey of Canada to determine the mythical title of "world's fastest human." From the beginning, the event took on a carnival atmosphere; and, with fifty meters left in the race, Johnson, who was trailing Bailey, pulled a muscle in his left thigh and dropped out. Afterward, Bailey ridiculed Johnson on Canadian television, calling him a "chicken" and a "coward." Responding to criticism, Bailey subsequently apologized for his harsh comments. The entire episode proved a black eye for track and field rather than the boost anticipated by the two competitors and their sponsors. Still plagued by the thigh injury, Johnson went on to have a mediocre 1997 season. Yet the golden touch had not entirely deserted him; and, when he could not otherwise qualify, Johnson was granted a waiver to compete in the World Championships in Athens, where he won the 400 meter finals. This win represented his seventh World Championship title, second only to Carl Lewis's eight.

In 1998, he won the 400 meter championship in the Goodwill Games at Uniondale, New York, and anchored the U.S. 4 x 400 medal relay team to victory in world record time. The Bailey race fiasco seems not to have seriously damaged Johnson's image. He will always be the man who achieved the "impossible double" and who ran the "astonishing" 19.32 in the 200 meters in the Atlanta Olympics while wearing his golden shoes. If he hasn't reawakened U.S. interest in track and field, he is a nationally and internationally admired athletic figure. At the age of thirty-one, he remains the golden boy of running.

—James R. Giles