Word: barcelona
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...reason was to make Johnson train even harder, extend himself even further, then that bad clam or whatever it was in Salamanca succeeded. Ever since Barcelona, Johnson has been on a mission to prove himself the fastest in the world in both the 200 and the 400. To the uninitiated, the 200/400 double sounds no more difficult than the more common 100/200 or 400/800 combinations. "The 200 and 400 are totally different animals," says Hart. If the 200 is a race that goes to the swiftest, the 400 goes to the smartest and strongest. Johnson, in fact, embodies those superlatives...
...that was it for supernatural performances. Since then no one, not Evans and not anyone else, has lowered any of her three great records. At the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, the winning time for the women's 400 free was 4:07.18, nearly 4 sec. slower than Janet's time at Seoul. And the winner was not Janet Evans. She came in second in 4:07.37, behind a relatively unknown German, Dagmar Hase...
...gone back down in the east. At the postrace press conference, Evans was polite but stunned and teary. "I felt awful," she says now."I was supposed to win. I let everyone down." A few days later she won the 800-m free in unexciting time and so left Barcelona with what almost every other athlete there would have rejoiced to own: one silver medal and another gold to go with the three from Seoul. But she was depressed and ashamed, and she quit swimming...
...last year she had begun to win meets, in times appreciably better for the 400 and 800 free than she had clocked at Barcelona. Her world records no longer haunt her. "I'm not quite sure how I did what I did then," she muses, "but the records are mine; they're nice to have...
Then came Barcelona and Zmeskal's disappointing nonmedal finish. Convinced that Zmeskal had been robbed of glory, Karolyi announced midway through the competition that he was retiring. At the time it smacked of politics. But in fact, Karolyi meant business, and bequeathed his elite program to Martha. "We were upset," says Dimitry. "Martha said, 'Don't worry.' It was his first big defeat. Martha thought he'd come back...