Johnson injury may be serious

MICHAEL JOHNSON is unlikely to compete at the World Athletics Championships in August because of a pulled left quadriceps suffered in his 150-metre showdown with Donovan Bailey.

"Michael couldn't bend his leg on Monday and could be out for two weeks to a month," said Clyde Hart, Johnson's coach.

If Johnson, the reigning Olympic 200m and 400m champion, is out for that long it would deny him a chance to compete next week at the US athletics championships in Indianapolis, the US qualifying meet for the world championships at Athens.

Johnson suffered the injury in Sunday's "world's fastest man" race against Canada's Donovan Bailey in Toronto. Bailey won in 14.99 seconds as Johnson pulled up about halfway into the show-down with an injury.

Bailey called Johnson a coward and a chicken and said the injury was not as severe as Johnson made it seem. He implied Johnson quit because he was being beaten, although Bailey has since apologized for the remark.

"He is more upset that people criticized him than he is with the injury," Hart said. "The whole thing was embarassing. Michael was lying down and getting treated and we get water and things thrown at us.

The 40,000 unhappy SkyDome spectators probably wrote an end to the boxing-style promotion of such one-on-one events in athletics, seen as a way to boost lagging North American interest in the sport.