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World Record in 200 Follows 400 Title; O'Brien Wins Decathlon

ATLANTA, Aug. 1—With a flinch, then a stumble, Michael Johnson set out to conquer Olympic history tonight. By his fourth step, he had righted himself. He was on his way. In 19.32 seconds, Johnson was finished. The crowd of 82,884 at Olympic Stadium erupted. No one ever had run 200 meters so brilliantly, or so quickly. "I got a lot more than I expected," Johnson said.

While Johnson dominated the track and field competition tonight, completing the first 200-400 Olympic double by a man and shattering the world record he set here in June, decathlete Dan O'Brien survived a scare from a 21-year-old German named Frank Busemann to win a gold medal that has been four years in the making; France's Marie-Jose Perec wrapped up a 200-400 double of her own; and American Derrick Adkins won the 400 hurdles.

O'Brien, who failed to qualify for the 1992 Olympic team but has not lost a competition since then, knew he could not finish more than 30 seconds behind Busemann in the final event, the grueling 1,500 meters, if he wanted to become the first American man since Bruce Jenner to win the Olympic decathlon title.

O'Brien, 30, fell 80 meters behind Busemann, but never let his opponent get any farther ahead, losing by less than 15 seconds. Busemann finished in 4 minutes 31.41 seconds; O'Brien, 4:45.89.

O'Brien finished with 8,824 points, the sixth-best score in Olympic history. Busemann won the silver medal in 8,706 and Czechoslovakia's Tomas Dvorak won the bronze with 8,664 points.

In the women's 200 meters, 15 minutes ahead of the men's, Perec became only the second woman to complete the 200-400 double, winning the 200 in 22.12 seconds. She caught Jamaica's Merlene Ottey with 10 meters to go; Ottey, a perennial also-ran in major international sprints, ran 22.24. Mary Onyali of Nigeria won the bronze in 22.38, while American Inger Miller finished fourth in 22.41.

Valerie Brisco-Hooks won the 200 and 400 at the boycotted 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Adkins, who went to college at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, won the gold in the 400 hurdles in 47.54 seconds. Samuel Matete of Zambia was second in 47.78 and Calvin Davis of the United States won the bronze in 47.96.

Adkins, the 1995 world champion, became the fourth consecutive U.S. man to win the gold medal in the 400 hurdles, dating to Edwin Moses in 1984.

But the focus of the evening—of the entire Olympics, actually—was Johnson's quest to win the 200-400 double. The international track and field federation changed the schedule of events for Johnson, so he could finish the 400, which he won easily Monday, have a rest day, and then begin the qualifying rounds of the 200.

But as the schedule was made to order for Johnson, it also placed him under unbearable amounts of pressure.

"There's never been this much pressure on me in my entire life," he said.

Johnson handled it well, breaking the world mark of 19.66 seconds he set at the U.S. Olympic trials in Olympic Stadium in June by an incredible .34 seconds. Namibia's Frank Fredericks won the silver in 19.68 seconds; Trinidad's Ato Boldon won the bronze in 19.80. Fredericks's time was the third-fastest in history, behind Johnson's 19.32 and his old world record of 19.66. Still, Fredericks finished a good five meters behind Johnson.

Unlike the 400, Johnson knew he would be challenged in the 200. Fredericks, a rival of Johnson's since Fredericks ran for Brigham Young and Johnson for Baylor, defeated Johnson on July 5 in Oslo, 19.82 seconds to 19.85 for Johnson, who got caught in the blocks and couldn't catch up. It was the first loss for Johnson after 21 consecutive victories in the 200, dating to July 6, 1994, when Fredericks also beat him.

"I told myself in the blocks, 'This is the one I really wanted, this is the one I didn't get in Barcelona,'‚" said Johnson, who had food poisoning in 1992 and failed to qualify for the 200 final.

Boldon, the NCAA champion from UCLA who won the bronze in the 100 and 200 here, bowed down to Johnson on the track after the race.

"Pretty soon after I ran the turn, he went by," Boldon said. "I said, 'Okay, there goes first.'‚"

American legend Jackie Joyner-Kersee returned from her disappointment in the heptathlon on Saturday to nail the automatic qualifying distance on her first attempt in the long jump preliminaries. She withdrew from the two-day event after aggravating a hamstring injury in the first heptathlon event, the 100-meter hurdles.

On a gray, rainy morning, Joyner-Kersee pulled off her sweats just long enough to leap 21 feet 11— inches, smile, wave to the crowd and leave. The final of the long jump is Friday night; Joyner-Kersee won the Olympic gold medal in that event in 1988 and a bronze in 1992.

"I feel pretty good," Joyner-Kersee said. "The hamstring's a little sore, but I'm just going to take it one jump at a time."

Joyner-Kersee, 34, said an MRI located scar tissue in her right hamstring, with a weak tendon as well.

"If it's going to go," Joyner-Kersee said of the tendon, "it's going to go with me going for it."

"This is it for Jackie," said her coach and husband, Bobby Kersee. "She knows this is probably her last long jump competition in the Olympic Games. If she's out there with a leg and a half, she's going to jump. It's going to take over seven meters [22-11 3/4] to win the gold medal, and I think she can go over the 7.10, 7.20 range [23-3 1/2, 23-7 1/2]."

Kersee said his wife wants to compete for two more years in track and field, but she also might look into the upcoming women's professional basketball league. Joyner-Kersee was a standout on the UCLA women's basketball team more than a decade ago.

In the decathlon, O'Brien had battled his nerves for two days.

"Actually, I fought all day to forget it was an Olympic Games," O'Brien said late Wednesday. "When I thought about the Olympic Games and trying to win the gold, it was just overwhelming. So, by midday, I was trying to think, 'This is another decathlon, this is another decathlon. Just get through it and you'll be fine.' The anxiety of the Olympic Games was a little more than I could handle. I was trying to break it down and think it was just another decathlon, and I managed to do that by the end of the day."

In the semifinals of the women's 1,500 meters, Algeria's Hassiba Boulmerka, the defending Olympic champion, tripped and was bumped in the last lap and finished last, failing to qualify for the final.

In the men's 1,500 semifinals, former George Mason University star Abdi Bile, 33, the 1987 world champion, easily qualified for the final in 3:33.30, third in the semifinal behind the world-record holder and favorite, Noureddine Morceli of Algeria, who ran 3:32.88.