drawn. The preference was lane four or five. Coach didn’t show any emotion. I think he didn’t really care which lane I got because he knew I could win from any lane, but I was intent on running the fastest possible time and wanted every advantage I could get.
Since the 200 is such a short race, I wasn’t as concerned about making an error as I had been in the 400. My main concern was trying to run as fast as I possibly could. Lane five, with its gentler curve than three or four, would be perfect. In addition, it would give me the opportunity to have at least one of the faster qualifiers outside of me in lane six as a rabbit. Instead of lane five, however, I drew lane three. Not ideal, but not as bad as it could have been. Besides, Frankie Fredericks from Namibia, a friend and someone for whom I have tremendous respect, Ato Boldon from Trinidad, and the Cuban Ivan Garcia, who was an incredibly quick starter, would all be in the lanes outside of me. That meant three good rabbits!
I put on my headphones, which I always used when I first arrived at the warm-up track to help me get into my own zone and focus, and to minimise distractions. Although I have always enjoyed a wide range of music from jazz to rap, 2Pac was one of my favourite artists. For the 400, I would always listen to some up-tempo R&B; Dangelo was a favourite. But for the 200 I liked to get into a more forceful mode, so I had a playlist of rap music to match the more aggressive approach needed for the 200 metres. For this race, I chose 2 Pac’s ‘Me Against the World’.
Coach walked over. ‘It’s time,’ he said. I already knew that; I had been looking at my watch every couple of minutes, waiting impatiently for that 30-minute pre-race period to be over so I could start moving again and getting ready. I started to do a modified warm-up which went really well. Then we got back on the bus.
Coach was really serious. I knew he was nervous because he had walked around the warm-up track for almost the entire 30 minutes while I was resting, which was always his tell. He didn’t say anything on the bus back to the Olympic stadium; neither did I. With my headphones back on I started to listen to 2Pac again. Same song – ‘Me Against the World’. The tempo was slower than I wanted, but it was saying all the right things. I did feel it was me against the world. Everyone else in the race – and in any race I was in – could make their careers from beating me. I couldn’t blame them for gunning for me. That’s what they were supposed to do.
‘Watch your start,’ Coach said when we got off the bus, reminding me not to pop straight up out of the blocks, which I tend to do as a result of my naturally more upright running style. Then he just said, ‘Go get ’em.’
In the warm-up area under the stadium where the other athletes waited, I checked in again with the officials, then sat in a corner by myself just running the race over and over again in my mind. I started to think about the camera flashes that would accompany my eighth entry into the stadium that week. I had been told that the flashes actually followed me around the stadium as I ran. That then led me to think about how big this would be if I was successful.
I knew what the next thought would be. How big this would be if I failed. Competing in athletics at the Olympic level is probably more difficult from a pressure standpoint than any other sport. With the Games taking place only every four years, the average Olympic athlete might make two Olympic teams in his career. So he has to go into an Olympics knowing that this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – he may never get another. To compound that sense of pressure, the athlete also knows that it is the biggest crowd he will ever compete in front of, and that the focus at home is on him. Everyone in his country is watching him and wanting him to win. This is not just any other competition.
So then how do you approach it from a mental standpoint? You know that it is special and the history and the magnitude of the Olympics can’t be ignored. But if you are to have your best performance, the type of performances you have had to get to this point, you must compete the way you competed in those competitions. So as an athlete you must strike a balance: on the one hand understanding the special nature of this competition and the rarity of the opportunity, on the other preparing and competing the same way you would in any other competition. That’s not easy to do, and it takes tremendous mental toughness to strike that balance and to resist the natural temptation to compete harder when the stakes are higher and the opportunity is greater. Competing harder can be dangerous. You can now run tight or overdo the preparation or the execution.
I was certainly at risk in that way. Having just completed four rounds of 400-metre races, including the final just two days before the start of the 200 metres, I was now about to run my eighth race of the Games. Certainly fatigue would have started to set in. I had known all along throughout my preparation and training for this task that it would be difficult and I would have to run a mistake-free race because so much was at stake. But even thinking about the stakes could easily stymie my ability to execute.
I immediately started running the race in my mind again. I knew that when I needed to be focused it wasn’t enough to tell myself not to think about things that didn’t matter or that were a distraction from the task immediately ahead. That didn’t work. I had to, first, recognise immediately when I was becoming distracted, and then replace that thought with something else. And the best something else was always the task at hand. So I always started with the bang of the gun and me reacting to it, and then visualised, step by step, myself executing the race to perfection.
Finally the official notified us that we had five minutes before going out. It was night-time and the temperature was perfect. I put on my spikes and waited. At this point I would always take the opportunity to look at my competition to see if I could gauge their feelings at this moment. Are they feeling confident, afraid or absolutely scared to death? Frankie’s demeanour was always mellow, which you might take for scared but that would be a mistake. I knew Frankie well and I knew that the fact that he didn’t have an aggressive personality did not mean that he wouldn’t run a fast race. Ato Boldon was the opposite. He always purposely carried himself with confidence. But he had never beaten me and I saw nothing in him that made me think today would be any different.
They lined us up according to lane and we walked out into the stadium. I didn’t look into the stands despite the flashes going off, but I couldn’t help noticing the screams and yells, all of which seemed to be directing me to win this race. ‘Go Michael!’ ‘You’re the best, Michael.’ ‘Give me your shoes!’ ‘I love you!’ Talk about pressure! But I liked being the favourite.
I walked on to the track, sat my bag down and positioned my blocks. ‘If I don’t run as fast as I know I can, it will be because of my start,’ I thought. So I took a practice start, going out about 200 metres. It was a good one. My starts were kind of a mixed bag. Sometimes I would get a good one and sometimes I would get an okay one. Rarely would I get a great one and never would I get a terrible one. I was happy with this one.
I got back to my blocks and settled in for another practice start. I got into the set position and imagined the bang of the gun and took off. I didn’t like my second start at all, but I kept running and focused on the drive phase of the race. If a start didn’t go well there was nothing I could do about it. I had to move on.
The drive phase went well, but it always did. I never had a problem with that part of the race. I walked back to my blocks, sat down and waited for the command to take our warm-up clothes off. I wouldn’t risk another start no matter how dissatisfied I had been with the last one, because that was not part of my routine.
As I sat there I thought about the Olympic 200 metres final I was about to run. Suddenly what had happened during the previous 1992 Olympics in Barcelona flashed in my head. As I normally did whenever I recognised that I had lost focus, I started my automatic default mechanism of visualising myself running the race. But part of my mind continued to dwell on the disappointment I’d suffered in Barcelona. I tried to control my thoughts. ‘Your competitors don’t care about your disappointment four years earlier,’ I told myself. ‘They just want to beat you today.’
