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Athletics: Johnson takes unconventional route to join the sprinters' élite

By Kathy Marks in Canberra

24 June 2003 - The Independent (UK) - The fastest man in the world this year has no shoe contract, and there is none on the horizon, but Patrick Johnson has more pressing matters on his mind. The first Australian to run 100 metres in less than 10 seconds, Johnson is convinced he can it mix with the best, and he is determined to prove it at the World Championships in Paris in August.

Breaking the 10-second barrier is still an extraordinary feat, achieved by only a handful of élite sprinters. Johnson did it at the age of 30, after running seriously for only six years. His time of 9.93sec, recorded last month in Mito, Japan, was the 17th fastest in history.

For Australia, it meant the end of a mortifyingly long wait to join the sub-10 second club. For Johnson, too, it was a watershed, allowing him to draw a line under a succession of injury-plagued seasons and silence critics who whispered that he was physically not capable of it.

Johnson is now focused on winning a place in the 100m and 200m finals in Paris, and in Athens next year. A week after Mito, he sent a signal to his far better known competitors when he was beaten into second place, by just a hundredth of a second, by the world record holder, Tim Montgomery, at a meet in Osaka. This time he ran in 10.05.

"I feel this is the tip of the iceberg," he said at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra last week, just before leaving for Europe. "I'm planning to step up to the next level and run even faster." Johnson's background is unconventional, to say the least. He was born on a speedboat that was taking his Aboriginal mother, Pearl, to hospital after she went into labour unexpectedly. She died in a car accident when he was 18 months old; he spent his childhood sailing up and down the Queensland coast with his Irish fisherman father, Patrick.

When Patrick Snr wanted to snatch forty winks, he would hand the boy the wheel of his trawler. "Living on a boat, taking responsibility for your own actions in life and death situations, you grow up fast," said Johnson. His father recognised his talent early on, betting beers with Queensland pub patrons that the seven-year-old could outrun them. He was given Cokes as a reward.

Johnson went to boarding school in Canberra, where he discovered a love of sprinting. But it remained a hobby until he competed "for fun" in the 100m at the 1996 Australian University Games, winning in 10.47. He was spotted there by Esa Peltola, a Finnish coach, who persuaded him to take up an athletics scholarship at the AIS.

Johnson turned down offers of lucrative rugby league contracts, but a series of injuries prevented him from qualifying for individual sprint events at the last two World Championships and the last two Commonwealth Games. Injured once again in the run-up to the Sydney Olympics, he was knocked out in the quarter-finals of the 100m and 200m.

But for the past year he has been injury-free, and he now looks like a credible medal contender in Paris. Can he stand the pressure, in a sport dominated by the likes of Maurice Greene, the Olympic champion, and Montgomery, who chalked up 9.78 at the Paris Grand Prix last year? Introverted and quietly spoken, Johnson is a very different type. But he is unusually well-balanced and mature. Employed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, he hopes for a diplomatic posting after he retires from athletics. He speaks several languages and is studying part-time for an international relations degree.

Peltola said: "He has a rare ability to embrace new ideas and drive towards excellence. I don't know exactly how fast he can run, but I'm certain that he can run faster than he's doing now." Johnson agrees he is single-minded. "Anything I do, I put 120 per cent into it, and no regrets." Of his flashier rivals, he said: "I'm hoping they'll get caught up in themselves and forget about me, and I'll just slip off the radar." He also claims that his age is no impediment. "I don't see myself as old," he said. "I never set any limit on what I can achieve." Could he win an Olympic medal? "I'm looking at getting to the finals. Once you're in that situation, anything can happen." On the absence of sponsors, Johnson said: "For me, it's not about money. It's about personal achievement, challenging myself and testing my abilities. Some people fear the unknown; I love the unknown, because then I can conquer it. That's what sprinting is about for me: how fast can the human person run?"

Source: The Independent (UK)

Johnson muscles in on gold

20 July 2003 - The Times (UK) - He was born on a speedboat, but the Australian sprinter with the colourful past is now making waves as the fastest man on land, says Richard Lewis.

Patrick Johnson is tme to go out there and work hard, that is what it is all about. Hopefully, mum is watching my every move.”

With an Aboriginal mother and an Irish father, Johnson describes himself as “a normal Australian with a colourful background who is doing the best he can”. His best is better than any other Australian sprinter has ever achieved. It is more than two months since 30-year-old Johnson shot to the top of the 100m rankings after he ran 9.93sec to win in Mito, Japan, and become the first Australian to break the 10-second barrier for the distance. His 9.93 is a time not even world record holder Tim Montgomery or Olympic champion Maurice Greene have been able to overtake.

It is all the more remarkable when you consider that he entered the sport just over six years ago when fellow students talked him into running at the Australian University Games.

Johnson was persuaded to take part in the 100m while studying at the Australian National University in Canberra. He was there on a scholarship from the Australian government, furthering his education after spending five years working for their foreign affairs department. He ran 10.47sec. “I had had no training and the spikes were too big,” he says. “But the officials felt I had some natural ability. The Australian Institute of Sport gave me a scholarship — after one race.

“A career in athletics is something I never thought about,” he adds. “But I am here now and, like everything I do, I am going to accept the challenge. Who knows where I will be in a few years’ time?” In five weeks’ time, there is no doubt where he will be: putting his unexpected reputation to the test when the blue riband event begins on the second morning of the world championships in Paris.

Such have been the vagaries of the 100m event this season that any one of 10 runners could take gold. Johnson does not say it will be him because “he just lets life happen”. Paris will be his second world championships after he was eliminated in the heats of the 200m in Athens in 1997. Following that, he reached the second round of the 100m and the quarter-finals of the 200m at the Olympics in Sydney in

2000 before winning a relay bronze medal at last year’s Commonwealth Games in Manchester. “People forget when I started,” he says. “I have no background in athletics. I have not had 20 years of junior running.”

His life would hardly have allowed it. Johnson spent 18 years living on a trawler, touring the east coast of Australia as his father took different jobs. During that time he attended 25 different schools, and most days he had to carry a portable dinghy with him so that he and younger brother Ryan could make their way back to their boat each night.

“Dad was a welder, a mechanic, he knew all the tricks of the trade,” Johnson says. “The longest I spent at one school was a year at Cooktown, while the shortest was a couple of days on Thursday Island. It was strange meeting new friends and then not having them, but we were used to it.

“But dad was keen I had as proper an education as I could. He would drop anchor and we would go to the nearest school. It was a great life in a sense. We slept on the beach and I took the dinghy to school so I could get back to the boat at night. But it allowed me to learn how to adapt to every scenario.”

One story, he says, stands out: “I had responsibility for the dinghy. I had lost a couple of them and I had to learn at a young age that it was a life and death situation. It was our way of getting to shore, but on this particular occasion we were in the Great Barrier Reef area and the dinghy was missing.

“My dad had to swim across the reef. There were tiger sharks in the area and he was not happy. He made it back to the boat and had a couple of words to say when he got there.”

Johnson coped well in spite of being constantly on the move and attending a vast number of schools, progressing to study languages and foreign affairs. “My major focus was my career and education,” he says. “I would eventually have liked to travel overseas as a diplomat and represent Australia in a non-sporting role.”

He speaks Cantonese and Indonesian, and continues to study in between races. When the summer season is over, he has two exams to sit. “I always have books with me,” he says. “Sometimes you can get caught up in the whole athletics arena, and there is a time and a place for everything.

“When there is a time to perform, you get ready for the track; outside the track, you have your life.”

On the track, he is struggling to come to terms with his new-found status. “I fell into athletics,” he says. “As I have come in so late, there will be no feeling of what I can achieve and how long I can go on.”

He is based just outside Rome for a season that reaches its climax in Paris. But why has he been running faster than before? “I have had a good year of training,” he says. “In previous years I have had only three months because of injuries. But I am not being caught up in having to win Grand Prix races all the time. Everything is a checkpoint towards Paris, hoping that it is all going in the right direction.

Breaking the 10 seconds barrier was always going to be there. I had run 9.88sec in Perth but it was wind-assisted, so the 9.93sec (in Mito) I felt was part of my heavy training.

“I do not put any ceiling on my running. There are no limitations in life, only the ones you put on it. I don’t see myself as different from anyone else.”

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