Johnson and Greene
settle for verbal duel
by Rebecca Bryan (AFP)
23 June 2000 - Eugene, Oregon, - Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene declined to take their 200-meter rivalry to the track at Saturday's Prefontaine Classic, making do with a verbal head-to-head instead.
The US sprint superstars are expected to battle for the Olympic 200m gold in Sydney, but for the Prefontaine IAAF Grand Prix, Greene headed the 200m field while Johnson was slated for the 400m.
Greene, the 100m world record-holder and world champion at 100m and 200m, resisted predicting a time for his first 200 of the year, but finally admitted on Friday that he had one in mind.
"I might be hurting myself when I say this, but I have a goal in mind ... of 19.80," he said.
Only Johnson, the world record-holder and Olympic champion at both 200m and 400m, has run faster this year. He clocked 19.71sec in South Africa in March, and also owns the second time on this year's list, 19.91 set in Seville earlier this month.
Although Greene and Johnson likely won't offer any 200m previews before the US Olympic trials next month, Greene insisted they weren't dodging each other.
"I don't believe we're trying to miss each other or anything like that," Greene said. "He's on his schedule for the most important thing, and I'm on my schedule for the most important thing.
"The most important thing is the Olympics, and that's what we have to get ready for. Everything will be found out in the Olympics."
Johnson was clearly happy to take on Greene off the track, getting in a sidelong swipe even as he shrugged off suggestions that he may have run too fast, too early, in the long Olympic season.
"I train to be ready to go in July at the trials and to be ready to go at the Games in Sydney. If I can run that fast off the training I've been doing, I'm not going to slow down and not run
fast just because I'm afraid.
"I can't help it if I'm that talented that I can run 19.7 off of the kind of training I was doing.
"If it just happens to come faster than all of the people I'm competing against, you know, I don't measure myself against what they're doing. I measure myself against what I know I'm capable of."
Johnson went on to add that he considered his 200m rivalry with Greene overblown.
"Do I think about it? I have to be honest and say that unless somebody's out there running 19.3 or even 19.4, 19.5 ... then I don't get excited about challenges from other competitors anymore," said Johnson, whose 200m world record stands at 19.32sec.
"There are guys out there that are extremely hungry, including Maurice. There are a lot of people out there, and you never know who it might be.
"If I get myself all excited about Maurice -- who hasn't run that fast this year in the 200 first of all -- but let's say he was running that fast. What if he got hurt? Then where's my motivation?"
Greene, holder of the 100m world record of 9.79sec, had more pressing concerns heading into the Prefontaine, such as erasing the memory of his 100m defeat in Helsinki nine days earlier.
"My blocks slipped, like, two meters behind me when we started," Greene said of the race won by Brian Lewis. "The officials should have stopped the race. It was literally that bad. My manager told me I should have stopped, but me being the competitor that I am, I felt that I could go catch him. But I wasn't able to, so I lost."
Greene's coach, John Smith, said the defeat may work in Greene's favour.
"Sometimes a little loss stirs up the soup, and you get the good stuff down underneath," Smith said. "I'm kind of anticipating some good stuff to come out of this weekend."