Word: baylor
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...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...
...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...
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...
...runner, Johnson began to blossom in his senior year, though he was still only the third best sprinter in Texas upon graduation. When Hart recruited Johnson for Baylor, located 100 miles south of Dallas, the coach thought he was just getting another runner for his 4 x 100-m relay team. "I didn't see him as a Southwest Conference champion, much less a national champion," says Hart. "But it's not the first time I was wrong, or the last." Johnson might have made the 1988 Olympic team as a sophomore, but he suffered a stress fracture...
Most people would ask, Why Waco? Johnson asks, Why not? He could have succumbed to the allures of such track havens as ucla, but he prefers the serenity of Baylor and the counsel of Coach Hart. "To tell you the truth," says Johnson, "I never even thought about moving." There is also a practical side to training here--Waco in the summer is even stickier than Atlanta...