If Johnson is ever going to Be Like Mike, it will be over the next 12 months. He’s already a superstar in track-mad Europe; this year he expects to earn more than $1 million from endorsements (principally Nike), appearance fees and performance bonuses. At home, however, U.S. track’s Athlete of the Year in both 1998 and 1994 can walk unnoticed through the streets. In America track and field is strictly a quadrennial affair, something heeded only during the run-up to an Olympics. And even then, most attention goes to the showoffs and slam-dunkers, not performers like Johnson, who is regarded as bland and businesslike. But at next week’s world championships in Sweden, he’ll launch a campaign that, if successful, should establish him as the poster boy for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. “Right now the name synonymous with track and field in America is Carl Lewis,” says Pete Cava of USA Track and Field. “But I’ve got a feeling after this year it’s going to be Michael Johnson.”
The classic sprint combination is the 100 meter-200 meter – the stuff of Olympic legends from Jesse Owens to Lewis. Johnson has taken it a stride further, adding the grueling 400 to the 200; in Sweden he will try to become the first man ever to win world titles at both distances. To accomplish that, Johnson will have to compete in seven races, running flat out against the next-fastest men on earth. “The body can only take so much,” says U.S. Olympic men’s track-and-field coach Erv Hunt. “But this guy is almost superhuman.”
At last month’s U.S. championships, Johnson won both titles. If he can repeat that feat in Sweden, Johnson will become an even wealthier 27-year-old man. It has been a long time since track stars embodied the “Chariots of Fire” notions of running for God and country. As recently as the ’60s, Olympic gold medalists like Bob Hayes and Jim Hines had to learn to run with a football to earn a living. Johnson makes no apologies for his professional approach. “This is my job, and I expect someday to support a family on it,” says Johnson, who is currently single. “It’s a lovely thought that everybody’s out there just running for glory, but those days are gone.”
Sometimes Johnson feels he can’t win anything but the races. Criticized as a running machine who never reveals a hint of emotion, Johnson tried to do some image mending at the nationals. He appeared headed for a world record in the 400 when he slowed at the finish line to celebrate the triumph with a high-stepping victory dance – “my Deon Sanders thing,” he called it. Johnson explained that he knew he would just miss the record so, instead, he rewarded fans with a show. But some track insiders wondered if Johnson was saving the world-record effort for a European meet that might pay a bonus of several hundred thousand dollars.
Even Johnson’s double-gold challenge has run into criticism. There are many in the American track community who wish he’d concentrate on one race and try to ensure himself an individual gold medal in Atlanta. “I’d sure rather win one gold than two bronzes,” says Tommie Smith, who won the gold at 200 at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and also excelled at the 400. Johnson is undeterred by any such counsel. “Sure there’s a risk involved, but that’s what makes it fun for me and exciting for the fans,” he says. Johnson knows about best-laid plans. At the 1992 Games in Barcelona, he was a big favorite in the 200. But he suffered food poisoning a few weeks before the race and didn’t even make the finals. (Johnson did anchor the U.S. gold-medal 1,600-meter relay team.)
Johnson was the youngest of five children in a middle-class family in Dallas. His parents stressed education; each of his four siblings finished college. Michael never dreamed of becoming a sports superstar. He was too busy dreaming of becoming an architect. He didn’t even run track his first two years in high school, so as to concentrate on studies. (Johnson wound up studying accounting and marketing at Baylor and is close to his degree.) He never won a high-school championship, and Baylor recruited him principally to run a 400-meter leg on its powerful relay team. Even his coach, Clyde Hart, was shocked when he set a school record in his very first 200-meter race. “We knew he’d be solid, but we had no idea he’d be that good,” says Hart. “He turned out to be an incredible combination of strength and relaxation on the track.”
‘No factor’: Johnson works hard at his job. He trains up to four hours a day, six days a week. “He outworks everybody to get strong, naturally,” says Hart, hinting at the steroids problem that has tarnished the sport. More evidence of his dedication, Johnson says smiling, is his decision to keep training in Waco, “where most nights I’m in bed by nine because there are no distractions.” He won’t be distracted, either, by the head games runners play. Before Barcelona, Carl Lewis campaigned to have one of his buddies replace Johnson on the 1,600-meter relay team. Now Johnson says he doesn’t worry any more about Lewis, who trains cross-state in Houston – because the aging “Carl is no factor.” In Sweden, Lewis will compete only in the long jump. “I can’t let anything or anyone distract me,” he says. “The only one who can beat me is me.”
Bureaucrats might trip him, though. The preliminary schedule for the Atlanta Olympics next summer has been set, and it’s not Johnson-friendly. To win both gold medals, he’ll have to run a 200-meter semifinal less than three hours before the 400-meter finals. Not even he could manage that. But maybe with an eye on TV ratings, the schedule will be changed. “Let Michael try for a double,” says Coach Hart, “and I bet the TV audience would stay glued.” Johnson wants his gold, and NBC wants its share, too.
