Michael johnson how fast

It continues to be an aspirational performance even for elite sprinters today. The run was an outlier — the Bob Beamon Leap of the Then Hart saw Johnson sprint past him into the home straight in Atlanta. Sitting in the stands by the meter mark, he clicked his stopwatch and was shocked to see 9. That was unbelievable. One day in the hot Texas spring of , Hart drove the four hours from Galveston to Waco wondering what the heck he was going to do.

The head coach of the Baylor University track team, he had gone to Galveston to sign the top and runner in the state, but he was coming home empty handed. Hart was counting on the recruit for his sprint relay teams, and without him, Hart was in desperation mode. He drove straight to his office and poured over results with his assistant coach. His name was Michael Johnson. Hart hopped back in his car and drove miles straight to Skyline High School in Dallas.

He found a school that had a football coach leading the track team and a runner with a stride that people thought was too upright. He had run He ran Johnson signed a contract with Nike in after graduating from Baylor based on his success, and in went on to win the at the World Championships in Tokyo by 0. He won the at the Olympic Trials in Instead, food poisoning two weeks before the games thwarted his Olympic dreams.

He finished sixth in the semifinals and had to watch from the stands as Michael Marsh of the U. Johnson recovered to win his first gold medal as a member of the U. Missing out on individual glory because of something as foolish as food poisoning stuck with him. With the Barcelona disappointment in the back of his mind, he rebounded to win the at the world championships in Stuttgart, Germany in and did what no other man had done at the world championships in Gothenburg, Sweden: Johnson won the and the in The U.

With heats, quarters, semis and finals, Johnson would have to race eight times in seven days. But the Olympics were in the U. They set a plan in motion to do what no one had ever done. Everything from training to nutrition to recovery had to be considered and perfected — even the shoes. Johnson crossed the finish line Gothenburg in a sprint spike that had been released in The shoes were cumbersome — Johnson wanted light and stable.

Enter Tobie Hatfield. He had worked his way through Nike, starting in plastics and foams in before moving onto product development. In their first trip down to Dallas early in , he told them he wanted a simple, light-weight shoe that would allow him to "feel" the track beneath his feet.

He wanted stiffness and stability, too. The team got right to work. They followed Johnson to workouts and races, using high-speed cameras to capture his stride and foot strike. They took out the receptacles for replaceable spikes, and instead used permanent ones.

There was one problem with the color, though. About two months before the Trials, when Hatfield was in Taiwan helping a team assemble the shoe that Johnson would wear, a group from Nike brought the final prototypes to the Baylor track to show the Olympian.

Johnson realized his coach was right. Before he knew it was coming out of his mouth, he said, "I want them to be gold. At about that same time in Taiwan, Hatfield was having a similar revelation. He held one of the "mirror" shoes and thought, "These look too silver. At p. And, as the reigning world record holder, Johnson was the heavy favorite for gold going into the meter final despite a fast field. Boldon, who won bronze in the meters in the Olympics, was in lane 6. At the gun Johnson stumbled slightly, but recovered quickly and passed Fredericks as they entered the first turn.

Johnson then kicked it into high gear, beating his closest competition to the finish line by four strides. After seeing his time, Johnson dropped to his hands and knees in disbelief, while Ato Boldon, who came in third behind Johnson and Fredericks, walked over to Johnson and bowed in awe.

Analysis of the race later revealed that Johnson had run a His official time of On the same night that Johnson became the first man to win both the and meters in the Olympics, Marie-Jose Perec of France became the second woman to accomplish the feat. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Simmering racial tensions and economic frustrations boil over in New York City on the night of August 1, , culminating in what is now known as the Harlem Riot of During an altercation in the lobby of the Braddock Hotel, a white police officer shoots a Black soldier, Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl hiding out in Nazi-occupied Holland whose diary came to serve as a symbol of the Holocaust, writes her final entry three days before she and her family are arrested and placed in concentration camps.

Frank, 15 at the time, received the diary on Martin, is released. Although not initially a The destruction is so massive other American PT boats in the area assume the crew is dead. Indeed, in the metre final in Atlanta, Johnson produced a time of Furthermore, in , despite a season blighted by injury, Johnson won the metre final at the World Athletics Championship in Seville, Spain in a new world record time of Johnson was recognisable not only by his specially commissioned, golden-coloured Nike track spikes, but by his unorthodox, upright running style, which attracted widespread criticism in the early days of his career.