PeerlessAdding the 200 gold to his 400, Michael Johnson cut his world record to 19.32by Tim Layden
Here was pure movement, as sweet and as fast as a man can run. Like a go-kart speeding downhill, blowing swift wind into a child's face—that is the way Michael Johnson described the feeling. His now familiar gold shoes flashed through the harsh artificial light of Olympic Stadium, the chain around his neck bounced rhythmically off his chest, and his arms hacked angrily at the thick summer air. The finish-line clock froze an impossible number.
Fredericks (left) ran the third-fastest 200 ever, but he was barely in the picture as Johnson neared the finish line.
photograph by
This was the answer. To the agony of a seemingly certain gold medal lost to bad food four summers ago at the Barcelona Games. To the pressure—"My picture on the cover of all the magazines when I hadn't won a gold medal yet," Johnson said—of achieving an unearthly goal. To the unseemly verbiage of this very week, in which a smart, considerate man had allowed himself to be drawn into a messy controversy. To the most disturbing suggestion of all: that the first double in the 200 and 400 in men's Olympic track history had become a given, and that its achievement would be anticlimactic.
Yes, the only possible response lay in performance itself. And this has always been Johnson's most eloquent tongue. He won his second gold medal last night, adding the 200 to his 400 gold of three nights earlier. He did so with a flourish that was burned into the minds of all who witnessed it, obliterating his own five-week-old world record with a time of 19.32 seconds. His previous record had been 19.66, and before that, the record of Italy's Pietro Mennea, 19.72, had stood for 17 long years.
"I thought when Michael Johnson ran 19.66 it was incredible," said silver medalist Frankie Fredericks of Namibia. "For 19.32, I don't know what to say." Sitting next to Johnson at a postrace press conference, bronze medalist Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago said, "I accepted the fact that the fastest man in the world was the winner of the 100 meters. Now I believe the fastest man alive is sitting to my left."
It was just past nine o'clock when Johnson folded himself into his starting blocks in a corner of the stadium beneath the Olympic flame. His triumph had been magnificently preceded by the sublime Marie-José Pérec of France, who won the women's 200 in 22.12, completing her own 200-400 double. Ahead of Pérec in the procession to the medal stand had been Derrick Adkins of the U.S., an intermediate hurdler who attended college only a few miles away at Georgia Tech and who last night won a gold in the 400 hurdles, in 47.54. And after Johnson's epic gold, Dan O'Brien would complete a long climb back from an Olympic trials failure in 1992 by winning the decathlon. Yet Johnson's victory would tower over everything.
First-day leader O'Brien (above) held form in the decathlon.
photograph by
He had been the dominant 200 and 400 runner in the world for four years when he doubled at the '95 World Championships. But his ultimate goal was to double in Atlanta. "I've always wanted to bring the two events together in a way that nobody else had ever done," Johnson said last night. "This sums up what my career is about. This is the biggest accomplishment of my life." To accommodate his quest for the double, he had petitioned to have the Olympic schedule changed, adding to the load on his broad back. Then this week, when Carl Lewis stole the spotlight from Johnson and his 400 victory by winning his ninth gold medal, in the long jump, Johnson bristled in his postrace words, a graceless departure. Last night, however, he made all kinds of history vanish.
In the set position Johnson felt a familiar fear. "I was afraid I wouldn't get this gold medal, that I wouldn't make history," he said. "For me that's good. I like to be nervous." His warmup at a track three blocks from the stadium had been so sharp that his coach, Clyde Hart, had to slow him down.
Now he rose at the gun, stumbled slightly on his fourth step and then relaxed, putting himself into an ethereal zone. At 80 meters he accelerated with ungodly power. "I saw this blue blur," said Boldon. "I thought, There goes first." Fredericks, who had ended Johnson's 21-race winning streak in Oslo on July 5, was passed next. Then Johnson found a gear in which no man had run. "When you come off the turn into the straightaway, you can tell how fast you're going," Johnson said. "I knew I was running faster than I had ever run in my life."
Johnson's stride is a low, stiff-backed scamper, the subject of much study. But in the closing meters his knees seemed to float upward uncommonly, his feet sailing over the hard, orange surface. His facial features were twisted grotesquely, and at the line he glanced at the clock and then threw his arms toward the heavens. Boldon bowed in homage. Fredericks, whose 19.68 was the fastest 200 time ever by a man not named Michael, embraced Johnson and smiled as if acknowledging the folly of his chase.
Pérec beat Johnson to the 200-400 double by about 10 minutes.
photograph by
"Nineteen-five, I always liked that magic number," said Hart. "He jumped right over that." Asked how long the record might stand, Hart replied, "When does Michael run again?"
Among the first to find Johnson in his celebration was O'Brien, who embraced Johnson and then returned to his own business, throwing the javelin in his ninth event. His no-height in the pole vault at the '92 trials had deprived him of an opportunity for gold in Barcelona. In recent years he has seldom felt the breath of an opponent, but even after throwing the javelin a personal-best 219'6", he went into the 1,500 only 209 points ahead of Germany's Frank Busemann. That meant he would have to finish within 32 seconds of Busemann in the final event.
The 1,500 is O'Brien's weakest event, but he tore through the last 200 meters to finish in 4:45.89, his best time since running 4:42.10 nearly four years ago in setting a world record. He finished with an Olympic-record 8,824 points, the sixth-highest total in history. "I expected to be here," O'Brien said. "That's what I've thought about every year for the last four years, winning gold in Atlanta. If there was a day when I didn't think about it, that might have been the day I quit."
After O'Brien finished, his face, like Johnson's, was a mask of discomfort. He leaned over with his hands on his knees. Then he dropped to the track, a few short steps from where Johnson had knelt in prayerful thanks 90 minutes earlier. Alone and finished, O'Brien bowed his head and wept.
SI Olympic Dailies
|
