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Michael Johnson celebrates winning the 200 male meters at the summer Olympic Games of 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia.
David Madison | Getty images
London – The sports career of the Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson did not have at the beginning more auspicious.
“I hated team sports,” he told a audience at CNBC’s Converge in vivo In Singapore on Thursday, referring to a period in which he played football.
“I had a great game once when I played football and we lost, and we are on the bus on the way home and everyone is sad, and I am thinking: I had a good game. I should be happy,” said Johnson.
“That told me that I needed to be in individual sport, right?” Added.
In 1987, when Johnson was 19, his future coach Clyde Hart noticed his athletics while Johnson studied at the University of Baylor, in Waco, Texas. He He won his first world title In the World Athletics Championship of 1991 in Tokyo, occupying the first place in the 200 m race.
Johnson said the first half of his track race was to win. “This is going to sound diabolical, but it was really trying to overcome people as bad as I could,” he said in Converge Live.
Later, he realized that if he was prepared enough, “he was probably going to win the races.” And so he changed his strategy. “Then he became pursued records and pursue the story and try to do things in sport that had never been done before,” Johnson said.
Then he became the only male athlete to take Olympic gold in Sprint events of 200 my 400 m, doing so during the 1996 summer games in Atlanta, Georgia.
Michael Johnson commenting for the BBC in the World Athletics Championship in Eugene, Oregon, in 2022.
ANP | Getty images
Johnson said the competition implies a technical approach and “executing the career strategy,” had developed with his coach. “(When) I am executing the race, I am constantly evaluating if I am behind or if I am ahead of where I need to be at certain points of the track and making decisions based on that evaluation of whether I need to make an adjustment,” he said. “If you make the wrong decision, it could be catastrophic.”
The athlete said he learned about leadership as captain of the 4 x 400m male -male relay team in the 1998 Goodwill Games. “You have to unite the people. Everyone has to understand … what is the goal. And you try to obtain their individual goals … so that they fit the broader objectives of the team,” he said.
Johnson founded Grand Slam Track, a sports league that will celebrate his first event in Kingston, Jamaica, next month, and described himself as a “entrepreneur” since he retired from competitive sport in 2001.
“I have been able to apply many of those things that I learned as a athlete … Preparation is everything. You are trusting the process, but I have a good process, right?” said.
