Usain Bolt and Michael Johnson are sprinting royalty, and they certainly have the self-belief to match.
The Olympic legends are two of the fastest men of all time, with a combined 12 gold medals between them, but never faced each other on the athletics track.
GettyDespite both being retired, the pair still rank in the top four fastest-ever 200 metre times[/caption]
Despite the pair being from separate generations and dedicating much of their time to different disciplines, this hasn’t stopped fans from debating who would come out on top in a race.
On paper, it is the younger Bolt who should pip his older rival to first place.
The Jamaican stands above everyone else in the all-time category, with eight Olympic gold medals, and still holds 100m and 200m world records.
Meanwhile, US great Johnson mostly competed in the 200m and 400m events, and held long-standing records in both before Bolt lowered his mark of 19.32 in the former by .02 seconds at Beijing 2008.
Though the American retired from athletics in 2001, his event best, set in 1996, still sees him rank as the fourth-fastest man of all time.
And Johnson’s continued presence towards the top of sprinting’s leaderboards, despite the emergence of younger rivals, has left him convinced that he would have had the measure of Bolt in a race.
In 2016, he boldly claimed: “I win that race every day. Every time we line up, I win that race, guaranteed.”
Johnson has since doubled down on this, explaining in July 2024 why he believed he would have come out on top had the pair competed in the same generation.
Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, he said: “I think I could rise to whatever occasion.
“Usain’s an amazing athlete and he would have had an advantage on me a little bit out of the blocks. But when he’s slowing down at the end, he’s not the most efficient at the end of the race.
Credit: YouTube: @HighPerformancePodcastThe US sprint legend was in no doubt who would emerge victorious between him and Bolt[/caption]
“I’m extraordinarily efficient. I would have beaten him on speed endurance, the ability to hold my speed, and my ability to be more efficient.
“And I’m just going to stick to that until the day I go to my grave.”
With Bolt hanging up his spikes in 2017, Johnson then laughed as he admitted he will never have to deliver on this claim.
He quipped: “No one will ever know [who would win]! So I have that advantage, no one will ever know!”
And while Johnson’s confidence that he would emerge victorious on the track was sky-high, so too is the Jamaican star’s.
In December of the same year, Bolt, who landed 100m and 200m gold medals at three consecutive Olympics, insisted a face-off between the two would have a different outcome.
Also appearing on the High Performance Podcast, the 38-year-old confidently stated: “No way he’s going to beat me!”
He then went on to recall proving Johnson wrong at the Beijing 2008 Games, where the American claimed he would not yet beat his 200m world record.
Ultimately, this would prove to be Bolt’s arrival on the world stage, as he claimed gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4 x 100m relay, setting world records in the former two.
Laughing, he remembered: “One of the funniest videos, in ’08, I think it was BBC he was broadcasting with.
“If you go on the internet you can find this video and they were asking him: ‘Oh do you think he’s gonna break the record?’”
“And he was like, ‘No I think his mechanics need some work, it will take him two more years to get to the world record’. And then in the same day I broke the world record!”
“It’s one of my best videos, I watch it every now and then.”