Michael Johnson is nothing short of a legend. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most consistent sprinters in the entire history of track and field. He took part at the Summer Olympic Games of Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000.
Johnson won a record 16 medals – 4 gold medals at Olympic Games, eight golds at World Championships and 4 golds at Goodwill Games during his 11-year career. He broke the world records in 200m, 400m and 4x400m relay.
Johnson is the only male athlete in history to win both the 200m and 400m at the same Olympics, a feat he accomplished at Atlanta 1996. Johnson is also the only man to successfully defend his Olympic title in the 400m, having done so at the Sydney 2000.
Johnson’s distinctive stiff upright running position and very short steps defied the conventional wisdom that a high knee lift was necessary for maximum speed.
Birth and Achievements
Born in the Texan city of Dallas on September 13, 1967, Michael Duane Adalbert Adam Johnson was the youngest of five siblings. As a teenager, he devoted himself to his studies, with athletics just a regular sideline. Aged 19, he enrolled at Baylor University in Waco, Texas and in April 1987, he was spotted by Clyde Hart – the coach who would later take him to the pinnacle of world athletics.
He twice set the world record in the 200m, three times set the world record as part of the 4x400m relay team, twice set the indoor 400m world record, once set the outdoor 400m world record, and once held the world’s best time in the 300m.
Johnson’s eight gold medals at the World Championships is tied with Carl Lewis for the fourth most gold medals by a runner. Johnson held the national records for the 200, 300 and 400 metres. The 4x400m relay world record was anchored by Johnson.
Back in 1988, when Johnson was a 20-year, he broke his leg at the NCAA Championships, preventing a prime opportunity to make the U.S. team for the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea.
His gold medals at the Goodwill Games include the 200m at Seattle in 1990, 200m and 4x400m relay at Saint Petersburg in 1994 and 400m in New York in 1998.
His personal best achievements: 100m - 10.09 sec (Knoxville 1994); 200m - 19.32 sec (Atlanta 1996); 300m - 30.85 sec (Pretoria 2000) and 400m - 43.18 sec (Sevilla 1999).
What Makes an Olympic Champion?
In 2011, Michael Johnson published ‘Gold Rush – What Makes an Olympic Champion?’ It is an exciting book on his own experiences as a four-time Olympic Champion and on the knowledge he has gleaned as a top-class coach and motivational speaker.
It features intriguing and exclusive contributions from a dozen Olympic legends across several different sports who between them have amassed a substantial haul of Olympic Gold Medals over the four decades 1970 to 2010.
Gold Rush is a compelling analysis of the psychological and personal qualities that combine to create an Olympic Champion. It deals with the multiple different obstacles and challenges enroute to Olympic success. MJ describes the crucial coach-athlete relationship and has dedicated the book to his coach Clyde Hart.
It is a masterpiece and should be in the collection of all sports lovers. I read it over and over during my stay at the ‘Athletes Village’ during London 2012 Olympic Games and used it as one of my most favourite publications among hundreds of references throughout my journey to achieve the doctoral degree.
Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games
At the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, Johnson earned his first world title of 200m by the unusual margin of 0.33 sec over Frankie Fredericks.
Johnson was the favorite to win the 200m at Barcelona 1992 Olympics. Shortly before the Olympics, Johnson traveled to Spain for a meet and contracted food poisoning. He had to halt his workouts due to the sickness, and shed 10 pounds over the course of the week.
“He was upset, wanted to pack up and come home,” Hart said. “I almost had to physically stop him and say, you’re not leaving. You’re still going to run on the 4x400 relay. He opted to stay and run the relay. Got his gold medal, but it wasn’t the one he wanted.”The 4x400m relay team set a new world-record of 2:55.74.
He won the 1993 U. S. title in the 400m, and followed it with world titles in both the 400m and 4x400m relay at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart. His 42.91 sec split time in the 4x400m relay remains the fastest 400m in history.
At the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, he won his first 200m and 400m double. No elite-level male track athlete had accomplished this in a major meet in the 20th century. At the end, he made it a triple by adding another title in the 4x400 m relay.
Johnson appealed to the IOC’s track and field committee to tweak the schedule to at least make a run at the double possible. What really greased the wheels, though, was the roof-raising show he staged at the 1995 World Championships.
Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games
Hart described how Johnson approached him with the idea of chasing the historic 200-400 gold double at the Atlanta Games.
“Michael’s a very smart kid. He’s smarter than me,” Hart said. “He said, ‘Coach, I want to do something that’s never been done, the Olympics are here in the United States, on my home turf, and I want to do it. We can do it.’ I said, ‘Mike, if you want to do it, we’ll do it. … It means you’re going to have to work harder than you’ve ever worked. Ability is one thing, but it’s going to be a test of endurance.’’
In June 1996, Johnson, 185cm in height and 79 kgs in weight was 28 when he ran the 200m in 19.66 sec at the U. S. Olympic Trials, breaking Pietro Mennea’s record of 19.72 sec that had stood for 16 years. With that performance he prepared to attempt to win both the 200m and 400m, a feat never before achieved by a male athlete.
Johnson entered the Olympic finals donning a custom-designed pair of golden-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. The left shoe was a US size 10.5 while the right shoe was a US size 11, to account for Johnson’s longer right foot.
On July 29, Johnson easily captured the 400m Olympic title with an Olympic record time of 43.49 sec.
At the 200m final on August 1, Johnson broke the world record he set at the U.S. Olympic Trials, on the same track one month earlier.
Johnson said he always felt nervous before a race. Years later he told Hart that the 200 final in Atlanta brought a different level of anxiety, though. While in the starting blocks, he briefly thought, what have I gotten myself into? If I don’t win, people will call me a failure.
Then the gun went off, and Johnson shot off like the starter’s pistol was loaded and he was the bullet.
You know the rest. As the fans chanted, “Mi-chael! Mi-chael!” and the cameras flashed, Johnson powered to the win in a world-record clocking of 19.32 seconds. As he motored down the home stretch, his signature gold Nike spikes led a golden path to the top of the podium.
“There were so many different emotions when I crossed the finish line,” Johnson said. “It was relief that I had done it, that I had succeeded. It was joy, that I was successful in completing the double and making history. And then pure elation that I had broken the world record by so much in the 200 meters.”
Some commentators compared the performance to Bob Beamon’s record-shattering long jump at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. During the race, Johnson strained a muscle in his leg, which prevented him from winning his third gold in the 4x400m relay.
After the 1996 season, 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, Harper Collins published his biographical/motivational book, Slaying the Dragon: How to Turn Your Small Steps to Great Feats.
Johnson’s 200 world record stood for 12 years before Jamaica’s Usain Bolt bested it by running 19.30 at the Beijing Olympics.
Johnson’s time of 19.32 enroute to breaking the 200m world record at the 1996 Olympics led some in the United States to consider him the fastest man in the world. In 1997 Johnson began appearing in Nike television advertisements in which he was billed as “World’s Fastest Man” as a result of his 200m world record.
In 1997, he raced against Bailey in a 150m race at Sky Dome in Toronto. Its unique course consisted of 75m of curved track and a 75m straight. Johnson pulled up around the 100m mark, having injured his hamstring. Bailey won the race and the $1 million prize. Both Bailey and Johnson received a $500,000 appearance fee.
After recovering from the injury, Johnson competed for his third 400m world title. The IAAF invented a new policy of giving a ‘bye’ to the defending champions essentially to allow Johnson to compete in the IAAF World Championships. Johnson won the 400m at the 1997 World Championships in Athens.
At the 1998 Goodwill Games in New York City, Johnson anchored the U. S. 4x400m relay team with Jerome Young, Antonio Pettigrew, and Tyree Washington to a win and set a world record of 2:54.20. Pettigrew has since admitted doping from 1997, while Young was caught doping in 1999. The world record was annulled by the IAAF in August 2008, and reverted to the time of 2:54:29 Johnson helped set in the 1993 World Championships.
Johnson was plagued by injury in 1999, and that limited him to just four 400m races before the 1999 World Championships in Seville. In 1999, at the relatively late age of 31 years and 11 months,Johnson laid down an amazing time of 43.18 to break the world record in the 400, a mark that held up for 17 years before South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk dropped a 43.03 at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Sydney 2000 Olympic Games
After qualifying for the Sydney 2000 Olympics in the 400m, Johnson sustained an injury in the 200m final while racing in a highly anticipated matchup against Maurice Greene. The injury prevented a defense of his 200m Olympic title.
Johnson added 400 Olympic gold at the 2000 Sydney Games, capping off one of the great track and field careers of all time. By winning at the age of 33 years 12 days, he earned the distinction of being the oldest Olympic gold medalist at any track event shorter than 5000m.
Overall, he went under 20 seconds in the 200 a total of 23 times in his career, and sizzled to a sub-44 time in the 400 in 22 different races.
But nothing will ever top that Atlanta experience, in front of his own country. Even a quarter of a century later, it stands out as one of the most enduring Olympic memories in history.
Johnson was also the anchor of the United States 4x400 relay team along with Alvin Harrison, Antonio Pettigrew, and Calvin Harrison, which originally won the gold, but was later stripped of the title after Pettigrew and Jerome Young were found guilty of having used performance-enhancing drugs.
In 2004, the IAAF ruled that Jerome Young was ineligible to compete in Sydney and annulled all his past results. In 2005, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned this decision and restored the original finish order of the race based on a ruling that a team should not be disqualified because of a doping offense by an athlete who did not compete in the finals.
However, Johnson returned his own gold medal, won as part of the relay team stating that he felt “cheated, betrayed and let down.”The IOC stripped the gold from the U. S. 4x400m relay team. Only Johnson and Angelo Taylor were not implicated.
Greatest Track and Field Moment
Johnson works as a television commentator, often for the BBC in the United Kingdom, where he has also written columns for the Daily Telegraph and The Times newspapers. Johnson first appeared for the BBC in 2001 at the World Championships and at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.
Johnson currently lives in Marin County, California, with his wife Armine Shamiryan and his son Sebastian, born in 2000.
In 2004, Johnson was elected to the United States Track and Field Hall of Fame, where his 200m performance at the 1996 Olympics was named the greatest track and field moment of the last 25 years.
In 2007, he opened Michael Johnson Performance, at McKinney, Texas, a training facility for athletes aged 9 to 18 and professional athletes in all sports. The company works with Olympic teams and football clubs. Michael Johnson Performance currently works with Arsenal, assisting in the development of young players in their academy.
Michael Johnson was part of the BBC’s presenting team at the Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. He was in the BBC commentary booth for the men’s 400m final in Rio de Janeiro to see his world record broken by Wayde van Niekerk, saying, “Oh my God! From lane eight, a world record. He took it out so quick. I have never seen anything from 200 to 400 like that. That was a massacre from Wayde van Niekerk. He just put those guys away.”
In 2010, Johnson appeared as a contestant on NBC’s 9th season of The Celebrity Apprentice, placing 10th after exiting the show due to a personal issue on the fifth episode of the season.
As part of the build-up to the 2012 Summer Olympics, Johnson made a documentary, Survival of the Fastest, for Channel 4 which investigated the dominance of Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean sprinters. Michael Johnson was one of the Olympic torch bearers in the relay in the run up to the London 2012.
In 2018, Johnson suffered a stroke that affected his left side. After two months, he stated he was almost “back to normal,” and attributed his successful recovery to the “Olympic mindset.”
(The author is an Associate Professor, International Scholar, winner of Presidential Awards and multiple National Accolades for Academic pursuits. He possesses a PhD, MPhil and double MSc. His email is [email protected])