Michael Johnson (sprinter)

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Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson at London's Olympic Stadium
Personal information
Nationality American
Born (1967-09-13) September 13, 1967
Dallas, Texas, United States of America
Residence San Rafael, California, U.S.
Height 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 m)[1]
Weight 175 lb (79 kg; 12 st 7 lb)[1]
Michael Johnson's voice
from the BBC programme Desert Island Discs, October 16, 2011.[2]
Sport
Sport Track and field
Event(s) Sprints
College team Baylor Bears
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s) 100 m: 10.09 (Knoxville 1994)
200 m: 19.32 (Atlanta 1996)
300 m: 30.85 WB (Pretoria 2000)
400 m: 43.18 WR (Sevilla 1999)
Medal record
International athletics competitions
Event 1st 2nd 3rd
Olympic Games 4 0 0
World Championships 8 0 0
Total 12 0 0
Olympic Games
Gold 1992 Barcelona 4×400 m relay
Gold 1996 Atlanta 200 m
Gold 1996 Atlanta 400 m
Gold 2000 Sydney 400 m
Disqualified 2000 Sydney 4×400 m relay[3]
World Championships
Gold 1991 Tokyo 200 m
Gold 1993 Stuttgart 400 m
Gold 1993 Stuttgart 4×400 m relay
Gold 1995 Göteborg 200 m
Gold 1995 Göteborg 400 m
Gold 1995 Göteborg 4×400 m relay
Gold 1997 Athens 400 m
Gold 1999 Seville 400 m
Disqualified 1999 Seville 4x400 m relay[4]

Michael Duane Johnson (born September 13, 1967) is a retired American sprinter. He won four Olympic gold medals and eight World Championships gold medals.[5] Johnson currently holds the world and Olympic records in the 400 m. He formerly held the world and Olympic record in the 200 m, and the world record in the indoor 400 m. He also currently holds the world's best time at the 300 m. His 200 m time of 19.32 at the 1996 Summer Olympics stood as the record for over 12 years. Johnson is generally considered one of the greatest and most consistent sprinters in the history of track and field.[6][7]

He is the only male athlete in history to win both the 200 meter dash and 400 meter dash events at the same Olympics, a feat he accomplished at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Johnson is also the only man to successfully defend his Olympic title in the 400 m. Aside from his Olympic success Johnson accumulated eight gold medals at World Championships, and is thus tied with Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt for the most gold medals won by any runner in history.[8]

Johnson's stiff upright running stance and very short steps defied the conventional wisdom that a high knee lift was essential for maximum speed. As of 2012, Johnson holds 13 of the top 100 times for the 200 meters and 27 of the top 100 times for the 400 meters. Of those, he holds 14 of the top 25 times for the 400 meters. He broke 44 seconds for the 400 metres twenty-two times, more than twice as many times as any other athlete.

Early life and career

Johnson was born and raised in Dallas, Texas as the youngest of five children; his parents were a truck driver and a schoolteacher.[9] He began running competitively at age 10, and attended Skyline High School and Baylor University.[10] At Baylor, Johnson was coached by Clyde Hart, and won several NCAA titles in both indoor and outdoor sprints and relays.[5] Among his early collegiate feats, Johnson broke the school record for the 200 m in his very first race with a time of 20.41, and in 4 x 400 m relays he clocked a leg at 43.5. 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.[10] In 1989, he placed 2nd in the 400 at the USA Indoor Championship, while at the NCAA Outdoor Championship he led off runner-up Baylor in the 4 x 400 with a time of 43.8 and won the 200 in 20.59. Johnson hit his stride in his senior season, winning three of the four major 200 m events on the schedule, taking the 400 m at the USA Indoors Championship, and anchoring several winning relay teams.

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.[10] In 1991, he won the world 200 m title in Tokyo by the largest margin of victory (0.33 over Frankie Fredericks) 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.[10] 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. Johnson ran around the leg in a time of 44.73.

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 42.91 second split time in the 4 x 400 m relay remains the fastest 400 meters in history.[5] 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.[10]

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 nearly 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.[10] (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 Pérec, in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.)

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,[11] while other sources state each shoe weighed about 94 grams (3.3 oz).[12] 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.[11]

On July 29, Johnson easily captured the 400 m Olympic title with an Olympic Record 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 finished the race in a world record time of 19.32 seconds, breaking by more than three tenths of a second the previous record he had set in the U.S. Olympic Trials, on the same track one month earlier—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.[5]

After the 1996 season ended, Johnson received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in any sport in the United States,[13] 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.

America's fastest man

Main article: Bailey–Johnson 150-metre race
Johnson's gold shoes

Johnson's clocking of 19.32s (10.35 m/s) en route to breaking the 200 metre world record at the 1996 Olympics led some in the United States to consider him the fastest man in America. In 1997 Johnson began appearing in Nike television advertisements in which he was billed as "America's fastest man" as a result of his 200 m world record.[14] This was despite the fact that the 100 metres world record holder, at the time Donovan Bailey (Canada), was typically given that unofficial title. However, the 200 m time almost always yields a "faster" average speed than a 100 m race time since the initial slow speed at the start is spread out over the longer distance.[15] In other words, the second 100 m is run with a "flying start", without the slow acceleration phase of the first 100 m and without the greater than 0.10 s reaction time of the start. In fact, each 200 m gold medalist from 1968, when fully electronic timing was introduced, to 1996 had a "faster" average speed at the Olympics than the 100 m winner, save one, yet there had been no controversy over the title of "America's fastest man" previously.

In a much hyped competition in June 1997, he raced against Donovan Bailey in a 150-metre (164 yd) race at the SkyDome in Toronto. The event was unsanctioned, and its unique course consisted of 75 metres of curved track and a 75 meter straight. The race was billed as a competition for the title of "America's Fastest Man." However, Johnson failed to live up to expectations when he pulled up around the 100 meter mark after Bailey was already ahead in the race and pulling away, ostensibly having injured his hamstring.[14] Bailey won the race and the $1.5 million prize that came with the victory, Johnson received $500,000. During the same year, Johnson won his third 400 m world title in Athens. 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 that year, because Johnson was unable to qualify the conventional method (by competing in the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships) due to his injury from the race.[16]

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 a world record of 2:54.20. Pettigrew has since admitted doping from 1997, while Young was caught doping in 1999.[17] 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.[18]

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 the IAAF policy established two years earlier for Johnson, 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.

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 of his 200 m Olympic title.

Johnson ended his career at the 2000 Summer Olympics by winning gold medal in the 400 m, which brought his total number of Olympic gold medals to four. By winning the 400 m, he earned the distinction of being the oldest gold medalist at any track event shorter than 5000 m in Olympic history. He would have won an additional medal as the anchor of the United States, 4x400 relay team along with Alvin Harrison, Antonio Pettigrew, and Calvin Harrison, which originally won the gold medal. On July 18, 2004, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ruled that Jerome Young was ineligible to compete in Sydney and annulled all his past results, including those achieved as part of relay teams. Young had competed for the USA team in the heats and semi-final of this event. Therefore, the United States team was stripped of the gold medal and Nigeria, Jamaica, and the Bahamas were moved up one position each.[19] On July 22, 2005, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned this decision and restored the original finish order of the race.[20] Then on June 2008, Antonio Pettigrew "admitted in court he cheated to win" by using banned performance-enhancing substances, and agreed to return his gold medal.[21] Johnson announced that he would return his own gold medal, won as part of the relay team with Pettigrew. Johnson stated that he felt "cheated, betrayed and let down" by what Pettigrew had done at the Games.[22] Pettigrew committed suicide in 2010. Both of the Harrison twins on the relay team have subsequently received bans for doping offenses.

Michael Johnson has run 200 m under 19.80 seconds six times, and he has run the distance in less than 20 seconds twenty-three times. He holds nine of the top 50 200 m performances of all time.[23] Johnson has run twenty-two 400 m races in under 44 seconds; he holds twenty-two of the top 50 and five of the top 10 400 m performances of all time.[23] Over the course of his career, he twice set the world record in the 200 m, three times set the world record as part of the 4 x 400 m relay team, twice set the indoor 400 m world record, set the outdoor 400 m world record once, and set the 300 m mark once.

After athletics

Johnson 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.[5]

Since retiring from competitive track, Johnson currently works as a television commentator, often for the BBC in the United Kingdom, where he also writes a column for the Daily Telegraph.

In 2007 Johnson opened Michael Johnson Performance, at McKinney, Texas, training facility for youth athletes aged 10 to 18 and professional athletes in all sports.[24] The company is the Official Training Partner of the Dallas Cowboys and official training center of the Dallas Stars and FC Dallas.

Johnson's sport management company, Ultimate Performance, serves as agent for track and field athletes, including 2004 Summer Olympics 400 meter gold medalist and fellow Baylor alumnus Jeremy Wariner.

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.[25] 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.[17] 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.[17] Only Johnson and Angelo Taylor, who also ran in preliminary rounds, were not implicated.[17] Johnson had already returned his medal because, as he said, he felt the medal was not won fairly.[17]

Michael Johnson appeared as a contestant on NBC's 9th season of The Celebrity Apprentice (2010), placing 10th after exiting the show due to a personal issue on the fifth episode of the season first airing April 11, 2010.

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.[26] The program made the controversial suggestion that a side effect of the slave trade may have been to accelerate natural selection as only the very fittest could survive the brutal process, resulting in a population predisposed to superior athletic performance.[27] In 1988, Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder was fired from his job at CBS Sports for making similar claims.

Johnson currently lives in Marin County, California, with his second wife Armine Shamiryan, a chef, and his son Sebastian, born 2000 during his first marriage, to entertainment reporter Kerry D’Oyen.[9][5]

Johnson was one of the Olympic torch bearers in the relay in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics, carrying it to Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire.[28]

Johnson was part of the BBC's London 2012 presenting team.

Achievements

Main article: List of career achievements by Michael Johnson

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 , profile page, accessed 20 June 1996
  2. ↑ "Michael Johnson". Desert Island Discs. October 16, 2011. BBC Radio 4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015ygxd. Retrieved January 18, 2014.
  3. ↑ Teammate Antonio Pettigrew later admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs and the International Olympic Committee disqualified the team.
  4. ↑ Teammate Antonio Pettigrew later admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs and the IAAF disqualified the team.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 "Michael Johnson profile". Baylor University. 2008. Retrieved 5 June 2008. 
  6. ↑ "Michael Johnson Biography and Olympic Results | Olympics at". Sports-reference.com. 13 September 1967. Retrieved 2 April 2011. 
  7. ↑  Michael Johnson. "Player Bio: Michael Johnson – Baylor Bears Official Athletic Site". BaylorBears.com. Retrieved 2 April 2011. 
  8. ↑ "Michael Johnson". USA Track & Field.org. 24 January 2001. Retrieved 25 August 2008. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Helena de Bertodano (9 July 2012). "Michael Johnson: ‘For eight years I was a five-time gold medallist. Then it was four-time. It’s not the same’". The Telegraph. Retrieved 17 July 2012. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Schwartz, Larry (2007). "Johnson doubled the difficulty". SportsCentury. ESPN. Retrieved 4 June 2008. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Christie, James (8 April 1997). "Bailey's Shoes Go High-Tech: Spikes to be ready for Skydome sprint" (reprint). The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 4 June 2008. 
  12. ↑ Berggren, Svante (November 2004). "Sole structure – European Patent EP 0964625". FreePatentsOnline.com. Retrieved 4 June 2008. 
  13. ↑ In American English, the term "athlete" is a generic term for a competitive sportsperson, and is not specific to the sport known as "athletics" in most of the English-speaking world and "track and field" in the U.S.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "The World's Fastest Man". 8 July 2004. Retrieved 16 July 2010. 
  15. ↑ "Who is the fastest man in the America?". Sportsscientists.com. 2008-06-26. Retrieved 2012-04-11. 
  16. ↑ Hill, Conway (30 December 2009). "From the Finish". Theviewfromthefinishline.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2 April 2011. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 Wilson, Stephen (2 August 2008). "IOC strips gold from 2000 US relay team". Associated Press. 
  18. ↑ "400m relay world record amended". BBC Sport. 12 August 2008. Retrieved 24 August 2008. 
  19. ↑ Patrick, Dick (18 July 2004). ""IAAF votes to take away 2000 U.S. relay gold"". Usatoday.com. Retrieved 2 April 2011. 
  20. ↑ ""CAS denies Nigeria Sydney relay gold"". Athleticsafrica.com. Retrieved 2 April 2011. 
  21. ↑ "Antonio Pettigrew agrees to return relay gold medal", Seattle Times, June 4, 2008
  22. ↑ "Relay champ Pettigrew to give back Olympic gold", Associated Press, June 3, 2008
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Larsson, Peter (1 June 2008). "All-time men's best 200m". Track and Field all time Performances. Retrieved 5 June 2008. 
  24. ↑ "Michael Johnson Performance Center". Youth.michaeljohnsonperformance.com. Retrieved 2 April 2011. 
  25. ↑ "Statement From United States Olympic Committee Chief Executive Officer Jim Scherr Regarding Antonio Pettigrew and Michael Johnson Returning their Medals" (Press release). United States Olympic Committee. 3 June 2008. Retrieved 5 June 2008. 
  26. ↑ ANDY CLAYTONThursday, July 05, 2012 (2012-07-05). "U.S. Olympic legend: Slavery gave me the genes - New York Daily News". Articles.nydailynews.com. Retrieved 2012-08-06. 
  27. ↑ "Survival of the fastest: Why descendants of slaves will take the medals in the London 2012 sprint finals", Daily Mail, June 30, 2012
  28. ↑ "BBC News - Olympic torch: Michael Johnson takes flame to Stonehenge". Bbc.co.uk. 2012-07-12. Retrieved 2012-08-06. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Michael Johnson (athlete).
Records
Preceded by
Italy Pietro Mennea		 Men's 200 metres World Record Holder
23 June 1996 – 20 August 2008 		Succeeded by
Jamaica Usain Bolt
Preceded by
United States Butch Reynolds		 Men's 400 metres World Record Holder
26 August 1999 - 		Succeeded by
Incumbent
Awards
Preceded by
United States Roger Kingdom		 Men's Track & Field Athlete of the Year
1990 		Succeeded by
Soviet Union Sergey Bubka
Preceded by
United States Kevin Young		 Men's Track & Field ESPY Award
1994 		Succeeded by
United States Dennis Mitchell
Preceded by
United States Dennis Mitchell		 Men's Track & Field ESPY Award
1996–1997 		Succeeded by
Denmark Wilson Kipketer
Preceded by
Ethiopia Haile Gebrselassie		 Men's Track & Field Athlete of the Year
1996 		Succeeded by
Denmark Wilson Kipketer
Preceded by
United Kingdom Jonathan Edwards		 L'Équipe Champion of Champions
1996 		Succeeded by
Ukraine Sergey Bubka
Preceded by
New Zealand Jonah Lomu		 BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year
(with United States Evander Holyfield)
1996 		Succeeded by
Switzerland Martina Hingis
Preceded by
United States Maurice Greene		 Men's Track & Field ESPY Award
2000 		Succeeded by
United States Maurice Greene
Preceded by
United Kingdom Simon Hughes		 RTS Television Sport Awards
Best Sports Pundit
2003 		Succeeded by
United Kingdom John Francome
Preceded by
Pablo Morales
Dan Jansen		 USOC Sportsman of the Year
1993
1995,1996 		Succeeded by
Dan Jansen
Pete Sampras
Achievements
Preceded by
Brazil Robson da Silva		 Men's 200 m Best Year Performance
1990–1991 		Succeeded by
United States Michael Marsh
Preceded by
United Kingdom John Regis		 Men's 200 m Best Year Performance
1995–1996 		Succeeded by
Trinidad and Tobago Ato Boldon
Preceded by
Nigeria Francis Obikwelu		 Men's 200 m Best Year Performance
2000 		Succeeded by
United States Joshua J. Johnson
World Champions in Men's 200 m
World Champions in Men's 4×400 m Relay
  • 1983: Soviet Union
  • 1987: United States
  • 1991: Great Britain
  • 1993 & 1995: United States
  • 1997: Great Britain
  • 1999: Poland
  • 2001: Bahamas
  • 2003: France
  • 2005–2013: United States

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