Playboy's 20Q: Michael Johnson

British runner Roger Black said that when you run against Michael Johnson, you run for the silver medal. Since 1990, Johnson has been one of the most dominant runners in the history of track and field. He has won 90 percent of his races, three Olympic gold medals and a record nine gold medals in the world championships. He once went eight years and 58 races between losses in the 400 meters.

Johnson's career has always been about doing things no one else has done. He was the first man ranked number one in the world in the 200 and 400, and he has done it five times. In 1993, he became the first man ever to win two different running events in the world championship. Two years later, he became the first to win the 200 and the 400 in the same world championship. In 1996, he became the first man to win those two events in the Olympics.

He also is the fastest ever to run the 200 and the 400. In 1996, he broke the 200-meter world record twice. At the Olympics, his time of 19.32 seconds took 0.34 off his own record. It was a staggering margin. Not since 1936 had anyone broken the 200 record by as much as three tenths of a second, and then it was Jesse Owens, the only athlete Johnson has ever idolized.

Last summer in Seville, Johnson added the 400-meter world record (43.18 seconds) to his résumé. Trailing behind were Sanderlei Parrela of Brazil and Alejandro Cardenas of Mexico, who set national records for their countries. But the closest of them, Parrela, was still 1.11 seconds behind Johnson, the widest margin ever in a world championship or Olympic final.

An injury in July prevented him from qualifying for the 200-meter Olympic event, but he'll try to win the 400 in back-to-back Olympics, then add another gold in the relay. By then he'll be 33 years old.

Johnson is one of the highest-paid athletes in track and field. After the 1996 Olympics, he signed a six-year contract with Nike that pays him an average of $2 million a year. He also commands a six-figure appearance fee for his races in Europe.

Ken Stephens has followed Johnson's career since 1989 and has seen him race more than 70 times in places such as Waco, Texas (Johnson's training base), Japan, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Atlanta. Stephens interviewed Johnson in the runner's north Dallas home. "His proudest possession isn't his magnificent gated home or one of his many gold medals or other awards. It is his first child, Sebastian, to whom his wife, Kerry, had given birth just six days earlier."

1

[Q]Playboy: Most kids in the U.S. who want to be professional athletes probably think of football, basketball or baseball. You went a different way. Why?

[A]Johnson: I tried football. Hated it. Football is a completely different mentality, from coaching all the way down. You know, the coaches yelling at you, trying to get you fired up. I didn't like that at all. When I first started playing sports, I just loved competing. I always liked individual sports better. I can remember playing on my junior high school teams, and I wasn't bad. I remember having a really good game, but we still lost. And I didn't like that at all. In individual sports, I liked winning and knowing that if I go out and have a good day today, I'll go home a winner. And, to be completely honest, I didn't like the contact of football. I didn't like getting hit and hitting.

2

[Q]Playboy: Track has made you wealthy. But are you ever envious of the astronomical salaries paid in basketball and baseball?

[A]Johnson: I never get envious because I look at it from two perspectives. One, I compare myself with other track athletes, and I do so much better than most of them. It's rare that track athletes have multimillion-dollar endorsement deals and make hundreds of thousands of dollars in appearance fees. So I feel fortunate to be able to do that, because this is the sport I'm in. I could look at it and say I'm the best track athlete in the world and Michael Jordan is the best basketball player in the world and he has a $30 million contract and I'm sitting here on a few-million-dollar contract. I could look at it like that, but I choose not to. I'm pleased with what I've got. The greatest synchronized swimmer in the world still has to have a job. The greatest gymnast in the world is still being supported by the Olympic committee. So it's all relative. But I'm comfortable and I feel fortunate to have what I have.

3

[Q]Playboy: Your 200-meter world record was unlike anything in the Olympics since Bob Beamon broke the long-jump record by nearly two feet in Mexico City. What were the unique circumstances that night in Atlanta?

[A]Johnson: I have always thought that breaking a world record is a bunch of factors coming together at the right time. That particular night it had to be what was at stake: an Olympic gold medal. It was my chance to make history by becoming the first man to win the 200 and the 400 in the Olympics. It was also that the Olympic Games were here in the U.S. It was a mostly American crowd cheering me on. And it was great competition. Two races before the Olympics, I got beat by Frankie Fredericks. It was all those things, and good weather.

4

[Q]Playboy: Do you think your 200-meter world record is breakable?

[A]Johnson: Yeah, I think that it is. It wasn't the perfect race, but I realize that it would be difficult to break. Those factors aren't going to come together again in my career. I'm not going to run another Olympic Games in the U.S. There isn't going to be another chance to make history by winning the 200 when I've already won the 400. And my focus isn't there, either. Breaking the 200-meter world record isn't something I'm aiming for. That's not on my wish list. But breaking 43 seconds in the 400 certainly is.

5

[Q]Playboy: Is there anybody today who could break that 200 record?

[A]Johnson: No. There's not a 200-meter runner out there who can run within three tenths of a second of that record.

6

[Q]Playboy: In the 400, 43.18 is your record. You're talking about putting it in the 42s. What's magic about 42?

[A]Johnson: The idea is to further show my dominance in the two events I run by breaking the 400-meter record by so much that nobody's going to run that for decades. Some people think it's already there--they don't count Butch Reynolds' record because of the drug suspension. But it was still standing there, so I honored it. A lot of people look at my time and say I've taken the record all the way from Lee Evans' 43.86 to 43.18. But I look at it as if I took it from Butch's 43.29 to 43.18, and I know I can do better than that.

With a world record, you get into changing the hundredths, changing the tenths. But when you're dropping a whole second, from 43, to 42, that's really doing something.

7

[Q]Playboy: How do you typically get ready for a race? We've heard, for instance, that when Kerry is traveling with you she has to get another hotel room that day.

[A]Johnson: Yeah, because I'm used to focusing, and she doesn't want to be around to distract me. She would just go out and stay out all day, and I was like, "You don't need to do that." I don't want her to feel like she can't come back to the room. But typically on race day I try to sleep. I try to stay up late the night before so I can sleep in pretty late. Because I don't usually race until the evening, I want to sleep late so that I can pass as much of the time as possible. Once I wake up, I'm anxious. I'm ready to get up and run. I want to run. And I've still got seven or eight hours before it's time to run. So I try to minimize that time as much as possible. I don't leave my hotel room on race day. I order room service. I watch television, a movie or two. Or I read, listen to music. About an hour or two before I have to leave for the track, I lay out my uniform and everything, make sure I have everything organized. I'll take a shower, put everything on, get what music I'm going to listen to and then go out the door.

8

[Q]Playboy: Do you have different music to get ready for the race and to cool down with after the race?

[A]Johnson: Yeah. I have music for the 200 and different music for the 400. For the 200 I want to put myself in a much more aggressive mind-set, because it's a more aggressive race. I usually listen to some rap, usually something like Tupac, something hard and aggressive. For the 400 I still want something that's up-tempo, that gets me going, excited. But I want something that's a little more rhythmic, that kind of just flows. I listen to rap sometimes, but usually it's not anything harsh. It's usually something new and current, some kind of R&B. But I never go to the track without my music. It helps me focus when I'm out there. If I have my headphones on, then I'm not distracted by what's going on around me. After a race, that's when I'll listen to some old R&B. I collect Motown Sixties and Seventies R&B. Something like Aretha Franklin or Marvin Gaye, or maybe Joe Cocker or War, sometimes Earth, Wind and Fire, Curtis Mayfield or something like that.

9

[Q]Playboy: The U.S. has the most successful summer Olympics program of any country, but a lot of athletes aren't happy with the way things are run, particularly in track and field. If you were the czar of track and field, what would you fix?

[A]Johnson: First thing I'd do as czar of USA Track and Field is clean house. I would get people in there who have experience in other major sports and have successfully marketed those sports to the public. USA Track and Field is mostly a volunteer organization. And you can't expect to get major league professional results from a volunteer organization. That just doesn't happen.

The second thing would be to organize meets here in the U.S. in such a way that they are more appealing to sponsors and to television and to viewers. You do that by bringing track and field events into the 21th century. You watch a track meet from the Sixties and a track meet today, and it's the same format. That hasn't happened in any other major sport. All the major sports have changed the rules, or changed the sport here and there over the years, to make it more exciting to the viewers.

The major problem with track and field is that there are too many events. I have the utmost respect for shot-putters, hammer throwers, discus throwers, javelin throwers and triple jumpers. But those events don't sell. Nobody watches them. You have to trim some of the fat from the sport.

Nobody wants to sit and watch me sprint and then watch a 10,000-meter race. You're slowing down the pace. You could have your 100 meters and go up to the 1500 or the mile, and then after that you throw in a high jump and a pole vault, some field events that people actually enjoy. And the hurdles. And that's a great track meet. But 5000- or 10,000-meter runners would be better served--and I believe that the sport would be better served--if they all went and ran the marathon. The marathon is going to offer them a lot more if they're successful than the 10,000 in track and field. And the marathon gets better audiences than track and field does.

10

[Q]Playboy: Now we're going to make you a coach. How do you get a guy ready to beat Michael Johnson?

[A]Johnson: If I were a coach, I'd tell an athlete not to think about Michael Johnson, not to worry about him. I saw a very good athlete last year, Jerome Young--one of the only people who I feel at this point can run 43 seconds--totally screw himself out of a medal at the world championship because he was trying to run with me. I think he can run 43, and he would have been a silver medalist last year. But he admitted that his strategy was based on my race and what I was going to do. There's nothing he can do about what I'm doing. So if I'm a coach, I tell the guy, "Don't think about him. It's dangerous."

11

[Q]Playboy: Which rival do you respect the most and why?

[A]Johnson: Frankie Fredericks. Over the years I've seen so many people come and go, and just about every year there's some new person everybody's getting excited about who's going to beat me. And then two years later he's gone, or not even ranked in the top 10, maybe even top 20, in the world. But Frankie has always been there. He's been around as long as I have. And he medaled in the last two games, in the 100 and the 200. The one thing I respect most about any sprinter is that he can show consistency over the long term.

(concluded on page 160)Michael Johnson (continued from page 132)

12

[Q]Playboy: Competition has taken you all over the world. Who's the most memorable character you've met in your travels?

[A]Johnson: Nelson Mandela. The meeting was set up by the South African Athletics Federation. What was really wild about the whole thing was that it was his last day in office. I was invited to his house, and it was just an awesome experience to be there with him. I had read his autobiography and had seen movies about his life, and I was impressed with him as an individual, for enduring 20 years in prison for something he believed in. To actually stand there with him and talk to him was overwhelming. He was a genuinely warm, nice person. You got a feeling that he was a grandfatherly type.

13

[Q]Playboy: You've done commercials for everything from Nike to Mountain Dew to Ray-Ban to Maytag. What's the goofiest thing you've been asked to do in a commercial shoot?

[A]Johnson: Nike asked me to take all my clothes off, and I did. And it turned out to be a pretty cool campaign.

14

[Q]Playboy: You will be 33 at the Sydney-Olympics. What keeps you running?

[A]Johnson: This year it's definitely the Olympics. I make a lot of money doing something I love to do, and you can't beat that. I have done everything that could possibly be done in the sport, as of last year when I broke the world record in the 400. But this is an Olympic year, and I love competition, and I know from experience that in an Olympic year everybody's at their best. There's no better feeling than to win and to beat everybody when they're at their best.

15

[Q]Playboy: What does a runner do when he retires? Will you jog to stay in shape?

[A]Johnson: Yeah, I will. Actually I'm looking forward to that, because now as a competitor--as opposed to just a runner--and a sprinter, I never get a chance to just go for a jog. In the fall there's about a two-week period where I can go for a nice run every day. But after that two-week period, which is just kind of initial base training, then it's always on the track for short sprints. About 500 meters, or 600, is about as far as I'll ever go. So I look forward to being able to just put on some jogging shoes and shorts and go up to the park or somewhere and just go for a jog.

16

[Q]Playboy: Are there things you've denied yourself during your career that you can't wait to jump into?

[A]Johnson: I have never been snow skiing and I want to do that for sure. That's about the only thing. There are some other things I haven't had enough time to do. I started taking race car-driving lessons back in 1994 and 1995. I'd like to get back into it, but not to try to become some professional race car driver or anything. It's just fun to get out on the track and learn to drive like race car drivers do. I guess I had denied myself kids, too. But I couldn't wait until I retired to do that. I had to go ahead. And I denied myself a pet because I'm gone so long, so I want to get a dog when I retire.

17

[Q]Playboy: You've said that until 1996 you were pretty much married to your job. How have your priorities changed now that you're a husband and a father?

[A]Johnson: Things have changed kind of steadily over the years. After 1996 I felt I had achieved what I had set out to do. I still felt like I had a major responsibility to the sport, but I felt I could relax. And it was at that point that my relationship with Kerry became a lot more serious. I started to think about getting married. Two years later we did, and she and Sebastian are the most important things to me. It's her and Sebastian. I know that after a race, Sebastian and Kerry aren't going to care whether I won or lost. I'm still Michael. And that's a good feeling.

18

[Q]Playboy: Most parents want more for their kids than they had. What do you want for Sebastian?

[A]Johnson: I want him to be happy with his life. A major part of why I've been pretty happy most of my life is that I've been successful at what I set out to do. A lot of people aren't happy with what they do. It's a job and it pays the bills. I'd like for him to be as lucky and fortunate as I have been and have a job that he loves. The way I look at it, for him to have better than what I have would mean that he has a job making lots of money, doing something he loves and not be in the public eye. That's the ultimate to me. But he may not be like me. He may enjoy being a celebrity and having people screaming, "Sebastian!"

19

[Q]Playboy: You're an organized man--nothing out of place. Are you going to run around the house picking up Sebastian's toys?

[A]Johnson: I already run around the house picking up clothes and diapers and all kinds of stuff. I've gotten better at that, or worse. Kerry probably sees it as better. I don't pick up every little thing. I'll let something stay for a day or two now. But I don't know. I'm definitely going to have to instill some discipline in him like my father did, that you put things back where you got them. That'll be interesting. That'll be a challenge.

20

[Q]Playboy: In Atlanta, you surprised us with the gold shoes. How are you going to top that?

[A]Johnson: I've actually been sworn to secrecy by Nike. We've been working for the past couple of years on a project that is really, really exciting. And I can guarantee you that nobody is going to be disappointed.