As he relaxed in a nondescript hotel lobby before his first individual race of the outdoor season, Michael Johnson still was sitting in a curious position between celebrity and anonymity. It was a point Johnson had reached by staking his claim to fame in the middle ground, where it then belonged by virtue of personality, athletic specialty and timing.
He had become the biggest star in his sport during the middle year between Olympics, when few but track nuts were paying attention. He had done it primarily in the 200 meters, a relatively obscure event caught between the more glamorous 100, the pure sprint, and the 400, the famed quarter-mile. He had done it a calm and courtesy that were both profoundly middle American and far from the style needed to grab attention in the media centers on both coasts.
He is a nice kid from a nice Dallas family who was graduated from a nice Baptist school, Baylor. So?
Well, in 1990 Johnson became the first man to be ranked No. 1 in the world in both the 200 and 400 meters in any year, let alone the same year. He won 14 of 15 races in the 200 and all six in the 400. He had the world`s six fastest times in the 200 and three of the top six in the 400. He was voted world athlete of the year by Track and Field News.
Before 1990, the biggest thing Johnson had done was win an indoor NCAA title. Now, with barely a year to go before the 1992 Olympics, he recently has been a Sports Illustrated coverboy, is the lead photograph in a spread on U.S. Olympic hopefuls in the current issue of Esquire and will be a featured performer at the Mobil/USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships June 12-15 in New York.
And yet, because of his predeliction for the easy-to-overlook 200 meters, he may always remain just another Johnson. So?
”I don`t care; it`s the event I like,” he said. ”I`m not out there to be the 400-meter man who`s so strong and fast or the 100-meter man who`s always the world`s fastest human. That`s of no importance to me as long as I`m doing well and achieving my goals.
”Being a superstar, wanting everyone to know who I am, that has never appealed to me. That has something to do with the way I was raised, but it`s also just the kind of person I am.”
Sport, in Michael Johnson`s family, was something else you could do if your grades were good. That was the simple rule laid out by Paul Johnson, a truck driver, and Ruby Johnson, an elementary school teacher, for their five children.
For two of his three sisters and his brother, something else was band. For the other sister, it was academic clubs.
Their grades were good. His four siblings all were graduated from North Texas State.
Michael, 23, the baby of the family, received his marketing degree from Baylor in December. He has deferred any thought about pursuing an MBA until after the 1992 Olympics.
Despite his success, Johnson continues to live modestly in Waco, 90 miles from Dallas and light years from media glare. His sole indulgence to date has been a 1991 Corvette. Johnson`s earnings from appearance fees, contract bonuses and other endorsements this year could be in the $500,000 range.
”If I can sustain this kind of performance through the Olympic year, it would mean even more financially,” he said.
So far, so good. After winning a 200-meter race Thursday night in Seville, Spain, Johnson remained undefeated in 1991, with six victories indoors and four outdoors. He has the world`s fastest time of the young season in the 200 and his 400 time is now second-fastest by .02.
”As far as being undefeated, usually the two years after the Olympics aren`t that competitive,” Johnson said. ”This year and next, it`s going to be a lot harder. People are going to be coming back to their main events, coming back from injuries, from laying off. Everyone`s going to be a lot more serious.”
This year and next, the season comes down to one event, anyway. First are the World Championships the last week of August in Tokyo. Then comes the Olympic track meet the first week of August, 1992.
Johnson, 6-feet and 170 pounds, faces a particular dilemma because he is the rare runner excellent in both the 200 and 400. Such a combination was not foreseen by schedule-makers for either the U.S. qualifying meets or the Olympics and World Championships, making it virtually impossible for someone to run both.
A further complication is Johnson must finish among the top four in the 400 meters at the upcoming U.S. nationals to earn a place on the 4 x 400 relay at the World Championships. That requirement was adopted after the chaos at the 1988 Olympics, when the coaches had some freedom of choice in the relay selection. Their choices, however, smacked of favoritism and politics.
So? Does Johnson stick with the 200, in which he is an overwhelming favorite this year, and settle for one gold medal? Does he do the 400, in which his dominance is far less certain, just to have a shot at the relay? Or does he attempt both, at least at the U.S. trial meets?
”I have to look at what Michael wants to do and what Michael`s goal`s are,” he said of himself. ”In the past, I would set a goal for myself, achieve that goal and go on to a new goal.
”This time, I have to go back to my original goal, which was to win a gold medal in the World Championships and Olympic Games. I could reevaluate my goals and say I`m going for two gold medals. But I`m not going to let rules and decisions that people have made for whatever reason, fair or unfair, affect my decision.”
Independent thinking always has suited Johnson. In football-crazy Texas, he dumped the sport after two years with the junior high school team. Then, once involved in track, he resolutely stuck with the 200 meters despite the event`s stepchild status.
”That (football) environment wasn`t me,” he said. ”I`m not a person who likes someone screaming and hollering at me. The football environment is too much aggression. You have to have some aggression on the track, but it`s not the same.”
Johnson`s passion for the 200 was less philosophical than pragmatic. He was a sprinter without the quickness necessary for the 100 meters but with enough endurance for the 200-although, as a high schooler, no thought of stretching that endurance to the 400, except on relays.
His strength, though, came from consistently doing the workouts designed for a quarter-miler. Yet he ran the open 400 only once a year from 1987 through 1989, deciding to do more last year only after some fast relay splits early in the season.
”I know the 100 and 400 are the glamor events, but the 200 is ideally suited to me,” he said. ”What people don`t understand about the 200 is the strength required. People think you`re running slower than in the 100, but you`re not. It`s an all-out sprint for 200 meters.”
Some quick calculation bears that out. The world record in the 200 meters set in 1979 by Italy`s Pietro Mennea, 19.72 seconds, is the purely mathematical equivalent of running back-to-back 100s in 9.86 seconds. The 100- meter world record is 9.92 seconds.
Johnson thinks in the next two years he will be able to get the record down to ”19.3 or 19.4.” His goal in the 400 is more modest than challenging Butch Reynolds` 1988 world record of 43.29. Johnson thinks Reynolds` 1990 positive drug test should invalidate that mark, even though Reynolds had passed a drug test when he set the mark in August, 1988.
”I don`t even look at that record,” Johnson said. ”That`s so far down there . . . it`s too far. I just want to get in the 43s.”
But Johnson came far and fast in the past year, lowering his personal best in the 200 from 20.07 to 19.85 and in the 400 from 45.23 to 44.21. That progression, however, is distorted somewhat by two seasons lost to injury.
In 1988, he would have been among the favorites in the 200 meters at the 1988 Olympic trials if he hadn`t suffered a stress fracture of a lower leg bone while running the 200-meter finals at the NCAA Championships earlier that year. The injury ended his season.
The next year, he pulled a quadriceps muscle in a headstrong attempt at the 100 meters-despite his coaches` objections-in the Southwest Conference meet. Johnson missed both the NCAA and U.S. championships.
”I know as well as anybody this stuff could go at any time with an injury,” he said. ”But the only thing that would upset me is if I got hurt and couldn`t make the Olympic team.
”It`s not because that is when everyone in America tunes in to track, so they would finally know who I am. It`s just because I want to do it.”
Michael Johnson, you see, is in the enviable position of knowing himself and being comfortable in that knowledge.
