Georgia Asks: What Price Glory? : Johnson Finds Double Trouble in Record Run

Catching up to Michael Johnson--that’s Michael, not Magic--was not a snap assignment, inasmuch as he is the fastest thing on two feet. Johnson was catching his breath after a workout in Waco, Tex., when I intercepted him a few weeks ago, on the cusp of becoming track and field’s greatest star.

He was packing his bags to leave for Paris and said on the phone that the hardest part was maintaining a focus on this summer, not next, when the Summer Olympics would come to America and present him with possibilities of a fame that he already has gained in much of Europe. “If I run 20 races in any given year,” Johnson said matter-of-factly, “at least 16 of them end up outside the U.S.

“You can’t expect a lot of notoriety if no one really knows you.”

Now 27, in his younger days Johnson was a slender Dallas kid with kind of a meek streak, not quite a nerd like that Urkel fool on the “Family Matters” television sitcom but not exactly the next Too Tall Jones, either. Johnson was a runner from the get-go and his swiftness was prized by every football coach who owned a stopwatch, but, Texan or no, football was not for him.

“I’ve been offered pro contracts,” Johnson said, despite never having played organized ball. “But throwing off defenders who are trying to knock your head off is not something I would encourage.

“I’m not into basketball, either. There are six guys on every bench, drawing who knows how much money, thinking they should be out there playing. In track, nobody’s on the bench.”

And so, Johnson shunned ballgames and became what was colloquially known as a thin-clad. Emerging from his teens, the speed kings of track and field were Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson, who in 1988 strained side by side down a runway in South Korea in a wild 100-meter stampede to determine the world’s fastest human. Ben Johnson ran fastest, in a superhuman 9.79 seconds. Later they found out what made that man named Johnson superhuman.

It was commonly understood in track and field that the combo plate for sprinters, be they Jesse Owens or Valery Borzov or F. Carlton Lewis, consisted of the 100 and 200 meters. Not since the Summer Olympics of 1924, held in Paris and glorified in the film “Chariots of Fire,” has any man endeavored to win both the 200 and 400 , as is Michael Johnson’s intention in Atlanta. Eric Liddell, a Scottish son of a China missionary, won the longer race but ran third in the 200.

Johnson yearns to win both.

“I know it can be done, and I know I’m the man who can do it,” he said. “What I don’t know is what the conditions will be.”

He isn’t talking about rain. The Texas tornado knows he has the skill and will to win both races--just as he did at the recent U.S. championships--and also knows it is within the bounds of human achievement, Valerie Brisco-Hooks having been victorious in the women’s 200 and 400 at the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984. Yet there are obstacles here that no hurdler could clear.

In what has been described as a crippling blow to Johnson’s chances, the federation governing international athletics has once again refused to revise the time schedule for the Atlanta events, dismissing Johnson’s request that the 200-meter heats not start until one day after the 400 final. It budged only in adding 50 minutes between the 200 semifinals and 400 final.

IAAF General Secretary Istvan Gyulai said: “I question whether for such a great athlete this is not enough. I think it is sufficient.”

Johnson says otherwise.

“Track and field doesn’t market itself properly,” he told me in June. “This is another example why.”

And so, immortality and one of track’s greatest achievements could elude this runner after all. Some daily doubles cannot be done. Johnson has anticipated running both races at next month’s World Championships in Goteborg, Sweden, but as he said before the recent European tour, “My goal is to become the only man of this century to win the 200 and 400 in the Olympic Games, and they may not let me.”

He has never been sharper. On July 10, Johnson broke a stadium record for the 200 meters in Stockholm, home to the 1912 Olympics. Earning a $10,000 diamond that will go in his ear--”That way I’ll always remember Stockholm when I look in the mirror,” Johnson said after the race--he clocked 20.15 seconds, in spite of coasting the last couple of steps.

Johnson has a habit of cooling his jets. He did so at the U.S. championships and might have cost himself a record. But he won easily in Paris and again in Lausanne, Switzerland, with a tremendous though wind-aided time of 19.96. (An Olympic omen if ever we’ve heard one.)

“People ask me why I slow down,” Johnson said. “I can’t just think about today. I have to think about down the road. My legs are my livelihood. I have to take care of them.”

I wondered what that livelihood would have been had it not been track and field.

“Well,” Johnson said. “In school I was a marketing major. Wish I could teach these guys how to market their sport.”