Michael Johnson

Michael Duane Johnson (born September 13, 1967) is an American retired sprinter who won four Olympic gold medals and eight World Championships gold medals in the span of his career.

He held the world and Olympic records in the 200 m and 400 m, as well as the world record in the indoor 400 m. He also once held the world's best time in the 300 m. Johnson is generally considered one of the greatest and most consistent sprinters in the history of track and field.

Some commentators compared the performance to Bob Beamon's record-shattering long jump at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

During the race, Johnson strained a muscle in his leg, which prevented him from winning his third gold medal of the Olympics in the 4 × 400 m relay as Team USA went on to win the gold even without him.

(Two women have won Olympic gold medals in both races in the same year: Valerie Brisco-Hooks in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and Marie-José Pérec, in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.)

Johnson entered the Olympic finals donning a custom-designed pair of golden-colored Nike racing spikes made with Zytel, causing him to be nicknamed "The Man With the Golden Shoes".

Sources differ on the exact weight of these shoes; the manufacturer of the spikes claims they weighed 3 oz each, while other sources state each shoe weighed about 94 g. The left shoe was a US size 10.5 while the right shoe was a US size 11, to account for Johnson's longer right foot.

On July 29, Johnson easily captured the 400 m Olympic title with an Olympic record time of 43.49 seconds, 0.92 seconds ahead of silver medalist Roger Black of Great Britain.

At the 200 m final on August 1, Johnson ran the opening 100 meters in 10.12 seconds and finished the race in a world-record time of 19.32 seconds, breaking by more than three tenths of a second the previous record he had set in the U.S. Olympic Trials, on the same track one month earlier—the largest improvement ever on a 200 m world record.

In 1991 at the World Championships in Tokyo, Johnson earned his first world title by winning the 200 m race by the unusual margin of victory of 0.33 seconds over Frankie Fredericks.

Two weeks before the 1992 Summer Olympics began, Johnson and his agent both contracted food poisoning at a restaurant in Spain.

Johnson lost both weight and strength.

He was the favorite to win the 200 m going into the Olympics, but he could do no better than sixth in his semifinal heat, and failed to reach the 200 m final by 0.16 seconds.

Nevertheless, he was able to race as a member of the 4 × 400 m relay team, which won a gold medal and set a new world-record time of 2:55.74.

Johnson ran his leg in a time of 44.73.

He won the 1993 U.S. title in the 400 m, and followed it with world titles in both the 400 m and 4 × 400 m relay.

His 42.91 second split time in the 4 × 400 m relay remains the fastest 400 meters in history.

At the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, Johnson won his first 200 m and 400 m "double".

No elite-level male track athlete had accomplished this in a major meet in the 20th century.

At the end he made it a "triple" by adding another title in the 4 × 400 m relay.

Johnson is the only male athlete to win both the 200 meters and 400 meters events at the same Olympics, a feat he accomplished at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

In June 1996, Johnson was 28 when he ran the 200-m in 19.66 seconds at the U.S. Olympic Trials, breaking Pietro Mennea's record of 19.72 seconds that had stood for nearly 17 years.

With that performance he qualified to run at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and prepared to attempt to win both the 200 meters and 400 meters events, a feat never before achieved by a male athlete.

After the 1996 season ended, Johnson received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in any sport in the United States, and was named ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year.

In August, HarperCollins published his biographical/motivational book, Slaying the Dragon: How to Turn Your Small Steps to Great Feats.

After the end of the 1996 Summer Olympics, American Sportscaster Bob Costas claimed that Johnson was faster than 100m Gold medalist Donovan Bailey Because Johnson's 200m time (19.32 Seconds) divided by 2 (9.66 Seconds) was shorter than Bailey's 100m time (9.84).

This started a debate on whether Johnson or Bailey was the real "World's Fastest Man", which in turn resulted in a 150m race between the two, in which Bailey won after Johnson, already behind in the race, alleged to have injured his hamstring.

After recovering from the injury, Johnson was able to compete for his third 400 m world title.

The IAAF invented a new policy of giving a "bye" to the defending champions essentially to allow Johnson to compete in the IAAF World Championships that year, because Johnson was unable to qualify the conventional method (by competing in the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships) due to his injury from the race with Bailey.

More than a month after the U.S. Championships, Johnson had recovered from his injury and won the 400 meters at the 1997 World Championships in Athens.

Johnson is also the only man to successfully defend his Olympic title in the 400 m, having done so at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

Aside from his Olympic success, Johnson accumulated eight gold medals at the World Championships and is tied with Carl Lewis for the fourth most gold medals won by a runner.

Johnson's distinctive stiff upright running position and very short steps defied the conventional wisdom that a high knee lift was necessary for maximum speed.

Since 2001, he has worked for the BBC, appearing as a pundit at multiple events.

He has been a part of the BBC's Olympics athletics coverage since Athens 2004.

As of 2012, Johnson held 13 of the top 100 times for the 200 meters (having broken 20 seconds 23 times) and 27 of the top 100 times for the 400 meters.

Of those, he holds 14 of the top 25 times for the 400 meters.

He broke 44 seconds for the 400 meters 22 times, more than twice as many times as any other athlete.

Johnson held the US national records for the 200, 300, and 400 meters.

The 4 × 400 meters relay world record was anchored by Johnson.