The athletics superman who defies the regulators

Michael Johnson is overwhelming, overpowering and over here. Mike Rowbottom on a man homing in on two world records

The bus pulling away from the Paris Hilton hotel last Monday en route for the Charletty stadium contained enough athletic talent to make the average meeting promoter go weak at the knees.

Res Bruegger, whose Zurich grand prix commands an annual budget of pounds 2m, is not the average meeting promoter. And after nodding and chatting to the likes of Colin Jackson, Mark McKoy and John Regis, he made very sure that the man he sat opposite was Michael Johnson.

By the time Bruegger puts on his big event next month, Johnson will probably be world champion at 200 and 400 metres; possibly world record holder at both distances too. The retired Swiss banker, curiously scruffy in a grey raincoat, leaned forward as he talked. Johnson, wearing the obligatory reversed baseball cap and personal stereo headphones (deferentially removed), nodded several times, before his characteristically sombre expression was compromised by a wide smile.

This is the way the athletics world goes round. And in that world, Johnson is probably the biggest draw of all.

Having seen to domestic business last month - he became the first man to win both 200 and 400 metres at the US Championships and trials this century - he is now giving European spectators the opportunity of reacquainting themselves with a method of running which, if you are being charitable, you call unique.

Johnson's head, and long torso, remain erect as a wooden soldier. His legs, strong but disproportionately short, are busy as a clockwork toy. The overall effect is of a man on a monocycle. And the marvel of it all is the stylists who strain, inexplicably, in his wake.

The Johnson stance has reminded many of his fellow Texan, Jim Hines, who won the Olympic 100 metres in 1968. Inevitably, in his early days, he received a lot of advice about how to regularise it; advice that was resisted. "Because most people run in a particular way doesn't mean it is correct," he says. "A runner is going to run his best when he is comfortable and I have no plans to change."

As his long-time coach, Clyde Hart, has remarked: "Maybe some people are spending too much time going up and down and not enough going forward."

Brad Hunt, Johnson's business manager, puts forward the clinching argument: "You don't take a guy who runs 19.7 for the 200 and 43.6 for the 400 and say 'now you have to change things'."

Johnson, 27, is the youngest of five children from Waco, Texas - he represents an enduringly positive image for the quiet town that became infamous for the siege which led to the death of David Koresh and 85 cult followers two years ago.

All his siblings are high achievers: two sisters are teachers, another is a special investigator for the Government, and his brother is a computer analyst. Johnson himself has a marketing degree from Baylor University.

Individual world champion at 200m in 1991 and at 400m two years ago, he will run both in next month's World Championships at Gothenburg and is currently lobbying for the Olympic timetable to be adjusted to allow a similar ambition in Atlanta next year.

Johnson's hopes of breaking the 200m world record of 19.72sec in Lausanne last week were frustrated by poor weather, but he did manage to have a meeting with the president of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Sam-aranch. If this summer works out for him as planned, there could be further discussions.

His appearance in the 200m at Stockholm tonight will inevitably have the statisticians twitching. Catch him while you can is an exhortation which only makes sense for spectators. Johnson has not lost a 400m race in six years and his fellow athletes are beginning to despair.

Roger Black, questioned at the beginning of the season about who he saw as his main rivals in the 400m, mentioned a string of names before turning inevitably to the reigning world champion. "At the moment Michael Johnson is in a world of his own," said Black. "I believe in positive thinking, but there is no other athlete in the world who can live with him at the moment."

Part of the urgency of Johnson's Olympic quest may stem from his painful experience at the 1992 Games. "Everybody can lose," he had said after breaking 44 seconds at Crystal Palace the previous month. "Michael Johnson can lose. But not in Barcelona." To general consternation, Johnson did lose - failing even to reach the final, having been weakened by a bad case of food poisoning while training earlier in Salamanca.

He took defeat like a champion - "the sun will be out tomorrow, and the stars will be out tonight. It was only a race." Defeat, nevertheless, is not something that generally impinges upon Johnson's world.

"After everything Michael has done, expectation follows him everywhere he goes," said Hunt. But pressure is something he can handle. "He doesn't just need it, he thrives on it," Hunt added. "We know what times he's ready to do."

Stand by world.