Michael Johnson explains why playing football prepared him for iconic moments on track and honed his leadership skills.
Four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson has opened up about how playing football early on in his career made him rethink about transitioning to athletics.
Johnson, the only male athlete to win both the 200m and 400m events at the same Olympics, a feat he accomplished at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, revealed that he only won once as a footballer, an outcome that made him crave for an alternative sport.
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In an interview with cnbc sports, Johnson, who is also the only man to successfully defend his Olympic title in the 400m, having done so at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, highlighted why he had to move to an individual sport.
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“I hated team sports. I had a great game once when I was playing football and we lost, and we’re on the bus on the way home and everybody’s sad, and I’m thinking: I had a good game. I should be happy. So that told me that I needed to be in individual sport, right?” Johnson posed.
Johnson went on to explain why, after curving a niche in sprints, the first half of his career was nothing short of winning. Later, he realised that winning was not everything but chasing records became a priority. He opined that he had to learn the technical requirements of sprints from his coach Clyde Hart and this was where his leadership skills emanated from.
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“This is going to sound sort of diabolical, but it was just really about beating people as badly as I possibly could. Then it became about chasing records and chasing history and trying to do things in the sport that had never been done before,” Johnson said.
”When I’m running the race, I am constantly assessing if I’m behind or if I’m ahead of where I need to be at certain points on the track and making decisions based on that assessment of whether I need to make an adjustment. If you make the wrong decision, it could be catastrophic.”
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The eight-time World Champion’s distinctive stiff upright running position and very short steps defied the conventional wisdom that a high knee lift was necessary for maximum speed. The now-turned pundit launched a new Track and Field League, Grand Slam Track, that is set to make its debut in April, Kingston, Jamaica.
