Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

[siacfan]

Here I go again who would pick between these two?

[wineturtle]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

Under 19.99
22 times MJ
10 times CL
Top 25 all time
9 times MJ
5 times CL
2nd best non A time
19.66=MJ
19.79=CL
5th best non A time
19.79=MJ
19.86=CL

MY conclusion MJ buy a tad less than a meter(say a yard?)

[tafnut]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

I would love to put Carl on the Atlanta OG track in 1996. In his prime he was demonstratably faster than FF, maybe even .3 better, so where's that put him? If someone were breathing down MJ's neck, would be have pushed too hard and tightened up? Carl would have been down 2m halfway through, but mm-mm-mm that would have been a sight to belold in the last 100.

[eldrick]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

who knows

a peak King, if he'd run on that atlanta track may have gone anywhere between 19.4 - 19.6, but not 19.3

[utkvol80]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

Johnson would have probably won such a contest, especially if he duplicated his 1996 OG final, but I don't think he would have dominated Lewis. The real question is just how fast Lewis could have actually run the 200? He let up significantly in his 19.75 PR.

[eldrick]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

pat connolly's view on him makes interesting reading:

http://www.athleticslinks.com/art/connolly.php

i wish someone had that tape

i only ever saw it once on tv in a general sports highlights programme soon after - i'm just so angry i never taped it

[eldrick]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

MJ had one advantage - he was a total & complete 200 runner who had mastered the whole event - most specifically that he was a near perfect bend runner with virtually no energy wasted "fighting" the turn

King i feel never did enough work on mastering the techinal aspects ( not enough time i suppose after doing priority work on the 100 & LJ ) - he seemed at most times to "fight" the turn as he hadn't mastered the ability to have the perfect lean & still go as near flat out as you could ( like MJ ) )

if he'd mastered turn running, there was plenty more time to come off - an example - it's said that he ran a terrible turn in his 19.79 in '88 ( difficult to tell from the grainy video i've seen ) - if you run a poor turn & drift out towards the outer lane line, you increase the distance run by anywhere upto

1.02 * pi = 3.2m

that would mean 203.2m run instead of 200m

if you ran 203.2m in 19.79, then it's fair to say you could have gone

~ 19.48

with a perfect turn & running 200m

now, he didn't run the whole turn on the lane margin, but you can see that anywhere between 19.48 - 19.79 was possible

[bad hammy]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

Prime Carl against MJ in Atlanta? Awesome race! I'd go with Carl, but certainly cannot argue with those going with MJ.

[tafnut]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

when you say 'Carl could not have run 19.32' just remember that NO ONE would have said MJ could run 19.32 either.

[Kurt Francis]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

Easy call if both in the Atlanta race together...MJ by 5 meters. He would've gotten 3rd.

As Ben Johnson so demonstrably demonstrated in Seoul, Carl doesn't catch up well when looking at someone else's back come crunch time. He shuts down when faced with a far superior performance. Take a look again at the Seoul tape when he KNEW he wasn't going to win. He could've broken 9.9 in that race, but decided to pack it in. I'd be willing to bet $1B he would've done the exact same thing in Atlanta once he saw MJ tearing away from him at break-neck speed.

JHMO

[immo]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

This is a tough one..the fact that Carl ran 19.75
slowing down considerably, makes this kinda difficult. Nonetheless, MJ's run(which I don't think can be broken) had a stumble out the blocks. That's the scary part.

[eldrick]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

>Easy call if both in the Atlanta race together...MJ by 5 meters. He would've
>gotten 3rd.

As Ben Johnson so demonstrably demonstrated in Seoul, Carl
>doesn't catch up well when looking at someone else's back come crunch time. He
>shuts down when faced with a far superior performance. Take a look again at
>the Seoul tape when he KNEW he wasn't going to win. He could've broken 9.9 in
>that race, but decided to pack it in. I'd be willing to bet $1B he would've
>done the exact same thing in Atlanta once he saw MJ tearing away from him at
>break-neck speed.

JHMO<


err...

he was looking at leroy's back for about 80 - 85m in the '91 WC

lucky for him he didn't pack it in at that stage of the race...

[bambam]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

Of course, 19.32 will be broken. Records will be broken. Whenever people have predicted the "ultimate" records - and projects like this have been published since the 1930s - those ultimate records were all broken within only a few years.

[tafnut]

Re: Michael Johnson vs. Carl Lewis 200m

Hey, Bill, Pat C. (FAST) - totally agree - Beamon's record was NEVER going to be broken.