MICHAEL JOHNSON: THE DOUBLE DARE

God's car alarm is going off, or so it seems. Every few seconds a piercing honk pushes past the eardrums of those in attendance and enters their brain. This is done on purpose so that the men and women on the Baylor University track team have a better sense of their pacing.

It's only April, but already the steamy air hints of the long, hot summer and the big, nasty mosquitoes ahead. A Union Pacific freight train rumbles and clanks along the adjacent railroad tracks--a tortoise to the hares inside Baylor Track Stadium, located in the deceptively named Beverly Hills area of Waco, Texas. It is a place with streets so mean that God would probably hesitate before parking here. It is the place where the greatest athlete in the world trains.

By all rights, Michael Johnson belongs in the other Beverly Hills. At 28 he is the reigning world champion in both the 200 meters and the 400 meters, two races as different as, say, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. One is lightning, the other thunder. Yet Johnson has won 18 straight 200s--make that 19--and 51 consecutive 400s--make that 52--and this July he will attempt to become the first man to win the 200 and the 400 in the same Summer Games. Olympic and international track officials had to rearrange the schedule to accommodate Johnson, but the payoff for both him and them could be immense: acclaim as the next Jesse Owens, the rebirth of track and, oh, yes, gazillions of dollars.

But on this April afternoon, Johnson is just one of the many charges of Baylor coach Clyde Hart, who, come to think of it, looks like the Old Testament version of God as track coach. "Let me see it," Hart says to Johnson as the runner takes the track in his new U.S.A. unitard. "What do you think of it?" Johnson asks Hart. "Well," says the coach, "I think the U.S.A. insignia is too subtle and the Nike swoosh is too bright. But that's the point, I guess." Just then another of Hart's runners, Marlon Ramsey, walks by. "Look, it's Superman," Ramsey says to Johnson, one of his probable partners on the U.S. 4 x 400-m relay team in Atlanta. "But, hey, what happened to your cape?"

Johnson may seem like Superman on the track, but he is decidedly Clark Kent off it. "He hasn't changed a bit since he came to me as a freshman," says Hart, who has been coaching at Baylor for 33 years. "Good head on his shoulders, great work ethic even then. His parents did an excellent job of raising him."

Indeed, one of the reasons Johnson flies faster than anyone else is that he is so well grounded. He grew up in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, the son of Paul Johnson, a truck driver, and Ruby Johnson, a teacher. They instilled in Michael and his brother and three sisters a sense of discipline and an appreciation for learning. "My folks," says Michael, "are the kind of people who wouldn't want you to make too much of their influence. They would say they were just doing their job, and they would be right. It tells you something about today's world that parents who make their children sit down and do their homework are considered extraordinary."