BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 12 : Michael Johnson Out of 200 Meters : Track and field: He says virus affected him. Marsh comes within a split second of world record during qualifying.

It was no surprise that a sprinter named Michael was the fastest qualifier for today’s final in the 200 meters Wednesday, or even that he came within 1/100th of a second of erasing track and field’s oldest world record.

The surprise was that it was Michael Marsh of Los Angeles, not Michael Johnson of Waco, Tex.

Even more surprising, Johnson, ranked No. 1 in the world in the 200 the last two years and perhaps the most prohibitive track favorite in the Summer Olympics before Wednesday, did not advance to the final, finishing sixth in his semifinal heat.

Johnson blamed his poor performance on the effects of a virus he caught earlier this month while competing in a meet at Salamanca, Spain.

“I had a lot of confidence going into the round, but I could tell in the backstretch it just didn’t feel like Michael Johnson,” he said after finishing in 20.78 seconds.

Marsh, who has emerged as a world-class sprinter since leaving Los Angeles to train with Carl Lewis and Leroy Burrell at Houston, won his heat in 19.73, 1/100th of a second off the world record set in 1979 by Italy’s Pietro Mennea.

Marsh, formerly of UCLA, would have broken the record easily if he had not coasted the last 10 meters when it became apparent that he would advance to the final.

“I turned it off a little bit at the end because I’ll have to do this again in the final,” he said. “I think it’s possible to set a world record in the final.”

His manager, Joe Douglas of the Santa Monica Track Club, said: “He didn’t know he was running that fast. He doesn’t have a stopwatch in his head.”

It was the second time that Mennea’s record has barely escaped a threat from a Santa Monica Track Club sprinter. In 1983 at Indianapolis, Lewis began celebrating a victory before he reached the finish line and cost himself several hundredths of a second. Lewis’ 19.75 in that race was tied with Joe DeLoach’s winning performance at Seoul four years ago as the second-fastest ever and the American record until Wednesday.

Lewis began his 1992 Summer Olympic competition Wednesday, leading long jump qualifiers for today’s final at 28 feet 5 3/4 inches.

“He had a bad meet at the Olympic trials,” said Mike Powell of Alta Loma, Calif., who broke Lewis’ 65-meet winning streak and Bob Beamon’s 23-year-old world record in the World Championships last summer at Tokyo. “But now he looks like the regular Carl Lewis.”

Powell, who has been suffering from a hamstring injury, also qualified on his first jump at 26-8 1/2.

“I wanted to spend as little time as possible on the runway and get back to therapy,” he said. “The hamstring’s fine.”