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FLYING FINISH
JUNE 24, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
What does it take to be the fastest man in the world? In the wake of Michael Johnson's world record breaking run at the Olympic trials in Atlanta, Jim Lehrer talks with American track coach Pat Connolly to find out.
MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, the man who runs as fast as the wind. He's Michael Johnson, and yesterday at the Olympic trials in Atlanta, he broke a 17-year-old world record in the 200 meter run. Watch him do it.
ANNOUNCER: And they're underway, and Michael Johnson is taking it out early. Johnson is racing as they come through the turn and approach the top of the home straight-away. Michael Johnson is there. Mike Marsh, Jeff Williams, Carl Lewis down in one--through the final meters--Michael Johnson wins it. (shouting) And it's a record. The march on Atlanta has begun! (crowd shouting)
MR. LEHRER: Now some thoughts about the Michael Johnson way and art of running from Pat Connolly, a track and field coach who trained Olympians Evelyn Ashford and Renaldo Nehemiah. Connolly, herself, is a three-time Olympian. Welcome.
PAT CONNOLLY, Track Coach: Thank you.
MR. LEHRER: How amazing is it, what Michael Johnson did?
MS. CONNOLLY: It's utterly amazing. It's so amazing I haven't even been able to digest it myself yet. 1966, that's the year my son was born, but aside from that, lowering the world record, which was 1979, I believe, Pietro Minet--
MR. LEHRER: Nineteen seconds.
MS. CONNOLLY: Nineteen seconds and seventy-nine hundredths.
MR. LEHRER: Yes.
MS. CONNOLLY: Was set a long time ago by Pietro Minet of Italy, over 20 years ago, and to imagine a record that has stood that long, set at altitude where he had a much greater advantage, altitude is thin air. In Atlanta, the air's not so thin, as we know, and he ran so fast, even faster than he did.
MR. LEHRER: Has he always run fast, or is this something that's he's groomed into through training, hard work, or what? How does that work?
MS. CONNOLLY: Michael Johnson has worked very hard to get where he is today. He is not what coaches would go out and say is a beautiful, gifted runner. If you take a look at that race again, you would see that he was--legs seem shorter than the average runner--and that he's arching his back. He's running--
MR. LEHRER: That's unusual, isn't it?
MS. CONNOLLY: It's very unusual to run leaning, like you're leaning back because most runners, in particular Evelyn Ashford, wanted a forward lean because it helps you keep your momentum, keep you going forward. Sprinting is overcoming the fear of falling, and that's a real good definition of it, because you can go so fast that you feel like you're going to fall down, and then you have to manage not to fall down. And one of the signs that you look for in a sprinter is slowing down, like Carl Lewis, who has also run about faster, nearly that fast. When Carl starts going so fast he can hardly control himself, you'll see him arch his back just slightly, and that arch is how they start to decelerate, to slow down, to get control to keep from falling.
MR. LEHRER: But Michael does just the opposite.
MS. CONNOLLY: But Michael Johnson is arching his back all the way around the track, and it's just unbelievable.
MR. LEHRER: What does it take in terms of physical attributes to be a great sprinter like Michael Johnson or Carl Lewis?
MS. CONNOLLY: Well, the two, the two factors that determine your time is your stride rate, how fast your feet are moving, and your stride length. So with your stride rate and your stride length you want to get the optimum combination of both. For Carl, when he starts a race, his stride rate is lower and it takes a long time for his long legs to get moving at a fast rate. But once they're moving at a fast rate, they're also moving at a longer stride length than Michael Johnson. So it's, it's those two things. In Michael Johnson's case, he has shorter legs. He can really turn fast. He almost reminds me of a sewing machine going up and down and up and down, or a piston, just up and down and up and down, and it's just atypical of most sprinters, where you're chewing up more of the track. So when he runs around the turn, if you notice the 200 meters is around a turn--
MR. LEHRER: One turn.
MS. CONNOLLY: The first hundred meters is on the turn, and then the last hundred meters is a straightaway, and it's hard for the longer-legged people to go. With the shorter-legged guys, they can really get up a lot of speed, churn it out because they're taking a shorter stride, and come off the turn with great momentum and, and fly.
MR. LEHRER: Is there a relationship between speed and strength in the legs? Do you have to have strong, muscular legs?
MS. CONNOLLY: You have to be incredibly strong and powerful. And what's really unique, along with the strength that we normally think, what's really unique about Michael Johnson is that he can maintain--he has the strength to maintain his high rate of turnover, his speed, his foot speed, for a long period of time than anybody else. He--
MR. LEHRER: He gets to his top speed just like that?
MS. CONNOLLY: Right.
MR. LEHRER: And he can hold it for 19.6 seconds?
MS. CONNOLLY: And he's had to work really hard, but the other factor you watch in most sprint races is who was slowing down the most the last 10 meters, because everybody starts to decelerate.
MR. LEHRER: Why do they do that?
MS. CONNOLLY: Well, the chemical byproducts of all this exercise is lactic acid, and when it starts to burn in your legs, you can't move your muscles anymore. And so people gradually slow down, and it happens to the best of sprinters, no matter how well-conditioned they are, but in Michael Johnson's case, he doesn't slow down. He just has worked so hard.
MR. LEHRER: Why is that? Is that something he's trained himself to do?
MS. CONNOLLY: Yes, he has had to train very hard because in order to do double that he has done--
MR. LEHRER: The double?
MS. CONNOLLY: The double is--he ran 400 meters in three rounds in the Olympic trials, and he won the Olympic trials in the 400 meters. The average, well-conditioned athlete would be feeling pretty tired and sore and full of a lot of lactic acid after that. But, instead, Michael Johnson came back and he ran 200 meters faster, faster, and faster. I mean, they ought to change the Olympic motto.
MR. LEHRER: And he's still got--he's still got to win some gold medals in Atlanta. What has he got riding on all of this? He's 28 years old. How big a deal is this for him now?
MS. CONNOLLY: Well, it's everything, and it's even bigger than money, and it's a hard thing to explain what the Olympics are about. When I competed in the Olympics, the athletes were all amateurs, and we did it for the love, and we would do everything we could because it was in us, we had to do it, it was something that you--if you're in NASA, and you're putting a man on the Moon, you want to get that man on the Moon--well, it's the same thing for runners. They want to see how fast they can run, how fast can they go. And so to do it on the right day, at the right time, in the Olympic games is just the pinnacle, and you can't do anything better than that. And that's waiting for him, and that's a lot of pressure.
MR. LEHRER: Is it now or never for him? I mean, if he--he's 28--could he come back in four years?
MS. CONNOLLY: It always seems like it's now or never. Of course, there's always comebacks, but right now for him not to win a gold medal would put him into dejection that would be hard to overcome.
MR. LEHRER: Pat Connolly, thank you very much.
MS. CONNOLLY: My pleasure.
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