Duncan Mackay
AS THEY approached the bend in the 200m final, the leaders were even making their differences seem mere matters of style. Frankie Fredericks, the Namibian who finished second in the 100m five days earlier, ran so tall and long that Michael Johnson, with his lower knees and shorter gait, looked like a trotter at full stretch trying to stay with a thoroughbred.
But then, passing 100m in 10.12seconds, the trotter really began to sprint, and showed a marvelling world that he really is the reincarnation of Jesse Owens. The hero of the 1936 Olympics said he ran as if the track was the top of a hot stove. Johnson, burning through the second 100m in an unbelievable 9.20, perfectly embodied Owens’s technique.
When Johnson was a single stride from the finish, the clock on the infield to his left had still not reached 19 seconds. It was only when he crossed the finish line that Johnson allowed himself to look back at it. When he saw 19.32 and realised he had taken 0.34seconds off the record he had set on the same track in the United States Olympic trials in June, a combination of elation, disbelief and relief spread across the American’s face as he cracked the kind of grin that has made Eddie Murphy a fortune in Hollywood.
No one has ever lowered the 200m record by such a margin. The performance has already been compared to Bob Beamon’s phenomenal long jump at the 1968 Mexico Olympics. That stood for 23 years. “This record could outlive everyone who saw it,” said John Smith, coach to Marie-Jose Perec, the French woman who, a few minutes before Johnson achieved the feat, became only the second woman to win both 200m and 400m at the Olympics.
Forget about the stereotype of the typical boastful Texan; Johnson has always known he can rewrite the record books.
Before the Games started, he admitted: “The worst pressures are the pressures I put on myself. Real pressure is when you don’t know what is going to happen. When I am in 100% shape, I put the pressure on myself to do a very good job, and that means setting world records.”
Johnson’s voice is a resonant baritone, the perfect vehicle for his matter-of-fact statements about his outstanding achievements. His studious image befits the son of a truck driver and elementary school teacher.
Six years ago Johnson, called a nerd at high school in Dallas and not long out of university, became the first man to be ranked No 1 in the world at 200m and 400m. He began hearing that he had a chance to brand himself on our collective imagination. Last Friday, when asked if his double made history or satisfied personal goals, he said: “Well, I happen to make it my goal to do something no one else has done, and that turned out to make history.”