Michael Johnson confirms his retirement
for 2001
Samuel Richards
16 January 2001 – You could not quite hear the sighs of relief crashing through the windows of London’s Hilton Hotel when Michael Johnson confirmed what the rest of the world’s 400 metres runners have been waiting hear.
"This is my final season, I am retiring, I will be going on a farewell tour—and I am not going to the World Championships," said Johnson.
The hint had arrived at the Olympic Games in Sydney in September when Johnson became the first athlete to retain the 400 metres title.
First. "Michael, what ‘first’ do you hope to achieve this year?," came the question. "Nothing," he replied.
Yes, this was the Michael Johnson who has spent the last four years not so much rewriting the record books but creating what could be the final chapter in two of them. Gold for someone else, in medals if not in the colour of their spikes.
His brilliance at the 200 metres and 400 metres has set such standards that even he could not predict when, or if, his times would be broken. But the moment has arrived for him to bow out—simply because there is nothing else he can achieve.
Johnson, Dallas-born, 33, has been one of the great athletics’ ambassadors, a warm man off the track and on it, a competitor so phenomenal that rarely in the history of the sport have so many rivals run for second place even before the gun has been fired.
But when you listen to the process which went through his mind before a race, it is easy to see why he took his events to unimaginable levels.
"During all my career, whenever I went to the start line feeling healthy, I never thought I would lose," he said. "I was only beaten once thinking like that, by Frankie Fredericks over 200m in Oslo in 1996.
"Frankie was the athlete who gave me the most trouble during my career but once I have retired, the 400m will become more open and it will be one of the most exciting events in the world."
His name at the top of the record books will stand for an age.
Ask people what their greatest athletics moment is and so many will tell you of where they were on Johnson’s finest night, at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 when he won the 200m title by obliterating his own world record by winning in a time of 19.32 seconds.
Not matter how times you see the replay on television, it looks like it is being played on fast-forward—as it did live—because Johnson’s legs are moving so quickly it defies belief.
That gold saw him become the first man to win 200m and 400m at the Olympics and in 1999, at the World Championships in Seville, he broke the one-lap world record with his brilliant 43.18secs.
In Sydney, he retained his 400m title having been injured in the 200m at the USA trials in Sacramento and when he helped the American team to victory in the 4 x 400m relay, it was his fifth Olympic gold medal.
"Every year I have run, I have always set myself targets. But there aren’t anymore," he said. "I am going to spend the year going back to some of favourite places and be able to sign autographs, have pictures taken and interact with the crowd. Often, when I am warming up and don’t sign, it is not that I have not wanted to, just that I am preparing for a race. Now I will have the time.
"It has been a fantastic career."
With his unique style, straight-back, short-stride and remarkable speed, Johnson has won every major 400m title since the World Championships in Stuttgart in 1993.
His biggest disappointment was missing on individual gold at the Olympics in Barcelona in the previous year after suffering from food poisoning but he made up for it at the next two.
In London for tonight’s World Sports Awards, Johnson has yet to finalise where his goodbye party will start and finish—but it is likely to end at the Goodwill Games in Brisbane in September.
Fellow American Alvin Harrison, who was second behind Johnson in Sydney, and Britain’s European champion Iwan Thomas, are just two of the athletes who will know that gold could become their property.
As Jamie Baulch, another Briton, said after finishing last in the 400m final in Seville. "Just to be able to tell people I was part of this race was something, being there when Michael Johnson ran like that."
Respect from every quarter.
When he retires, he will work as a television commentator, sit on the committees of a number of companies and savour the rest after 14 years...as a full-time athlete extraordinaire.