Remembering the wacky Donovan Bailey vs. Michael Johnson 150m race

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You can blame Bob Costas for all of this.

Long before "hot take" entered the lexicon, the normally astute NBC broadcaster dropped a scorcher when comparing the two best sprinters at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. If, Costas proposed, you take the world-record 19.32 seconds that American Michael Johnson ran in the men's 200 metres and cut it in half, that's 9.66 — considerably faster than the world-record 9.84 that Canadian Donovan Bailey laid down to win the 100m. Ergo, doesn't that make Johnson the World's Fastest Man?

All due respect to Bob, but that's not how this works. For one, the unofficial WFM title had always gone to the winner of the 100m. And also, a 200m athlete begins the second half of their race with a running "start." So, no, you can't just divide the time in half. Bailey reacted to Costas' voodoo math a little more bluntly, dismissing it as "a person who knew nothing about track talking about it with a lot of people listening."

No one really took Costas' calculation seriously, but still, a seed was planted. Who was actually faster? Was it Johnson, who'd made history in Atlanta by becoming the first (and still only) man to win gold in both the 200m and 400m at the same Olympics? Or Bailey, who'd won the Games' marquee event in world-record time before anchoring Canada to gold in the 4x100m relay? Predictably, someone's answer to that question depended a lot on the passport in their pocket. Most Americans would probably go with Johnson, while the vast majority of Canadians backed Bailey — and seemed insulted that anyone would dare suggest otherwise.

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