THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 14, 1996 TAG: 9607140281
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: OLYMPICS 1996
July 19 - Aug. 4
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 218 lines
Listen to Lawrence Johnson, the musician, play. He sits at a piano in the empty hotel lobby and fills the room with a lilting love song he's composed.
It is the work of a romantic who had poems published in elementary school, who sings with a rhythm and blues group, who smothers his parents with phone calls and affection. ``He's always kissing me,'' his mom says.
He is a dreamer, too. So listen to Lawrence Johnson, the athlete, dream.
It is Aug. 2, Atlanta, the Olympic pole vault finals. More than 80,000 people are in the seats, millions are in front of TVs, but just two vaulters remain - Johnson, the 22-year-old American record holder (19 feet-7 1/2 inches) from Chesapeake, and Sergei Bubka, the world record holder (20-1 3/4) from the Ukraine.
``It's me and Bubka and the bar's at 20-2,'' says Johnson, his stream-of-consciousness overflowing. ``We both clear it and then, for the first time, instead of him having the ability to just set the world record whenever he wants to, and if he does it's a bonus in his pocket, he's in a situation where he has to jump a world record, not to make money but to be competitive if he wants to win this meet and the gold medal.''
Johnson sits back, bares a pleasant smile and slows his soft voice.
``That's the idea,'' he says. ``That's what I'd like to see it come down to.''
Somebody, if not Johnson, might even write a song about it, or at least a footwear commercial. America hasn't medaled in the Olympic pole vault since 1984, when the Soviets boycotted, or claimed a gold since Bob Seagren in 1968.
Nobody, though, is saying Johnson's scene can't happen. What fool tells a guy with Johnson's drive, vision and athleticism he can't do something?
This is a man who not only wants to supplant Bubka as best in the world but be the first to soar 21 feet. This is a man who already says he'll turn to the decathlon, the 10-event survival test, when he gets so much better than the other vaulters that he's bored.
Trite but true: What Johnson wants, he usually gets.
Growing up in Norfolk, he wanted to play football and baseball, and so was a recreation league standout. At Lake Taylor High School, he wanted to emulate his father, a former Norview and Norfolk State hurdler, but coach Floyd Conley nudged him toward pole vaulting because of his agility and fearlessness. So after Johnson's family moved to Chesapeake, he became not only a national vaulting champion but a five-event star at Great Bridge.
Johnson wanted a college scholarship. So he took the SAT once, scored over 1,100 and waited for the offers. He accepted the University of Tennessee's.
He wanted to play, sing and write music, so he taught himself how and got good enough to join a Knoxville band called Soja. He wanted to be an NCAA champion, an Olympian and a world-class vaulter, so he studied articles and videos, frame by frame, of the world's best, including Bubka, until he became all three.
Get the picture? Bubka has.
At a meet in Sestriere, Italy last summer, Johnson asked for and received a tip on his takeoff from Bubka. ``I went down the runway and corrected it immediately,'' Johnson says. ``I came back and asked him again to give me some more help with another problem . . . and he started playing that game like he didn't know English anymore.''
Her son, says Teena Johnson, ``is a rare person. He used to tell me, `Mom, don't stop me because I'm going to the Olympics.' ''
Teena and her husband of 25 years, Lawrence, are in the living room of their brick ranch home in Chesapeake's Cedarwood development, discussing their oldest son. They call him by his middle name, Clayton. The father's middle name is Cleveland.
``It used to bother me, watching the way he'd bruise his body,'' Teena Johnson says. ``I wanted him to give up pole vaulting. One time his skin was all peeling from his shoulder. But that was when he told me he was going to the Olympics.''
The really impressive part is that Johnson is about one foot and one Olympics ahead of a normal schedule. Vaulters generally don't reach their peak in track and field's most technical event till their late 20s or early 30s. Considering that Johnson is still regarded as more raw talent than technique, his accomplishments are astounding.
He is a two-time NCAA indoor champion, a two-time outdoor champion, the Penn Relays record holder, the NCAA record holder, the Olympic Trials champion and the national record holder. He is just the third man to win the NCAA title and Olympic Trials in the same year.
And he's done all that despite battling foot and leg injuries for more than a year. Johnson tore tendons in his left foot when he crashed into the vault standards as a sophomore. Before that, he says he was considering joining the pro European circuit, but suddenly his condition clouded everything.
He admits to some self-doubt during rehabilitation, but ``I never got to the point where I thought my career was over,'' Johnson says.
However, when he returned, Johnson suffered repeated muscle pulls that followed him into last spring. Yet he managed to win the NCAAs indoors and outdoors and, with hardly any practice, finish second in the Southeastern Conference decathlon. He won that event as a freshman.
Doug Brown, Tennessee's former coach, Florida's current coach and also the U.S. Olympic vaulting coach, stumbles over how to explain Johnson's precociousness.
``I just call it genetic gifts,'' Brown says. ``That's got a lot to do with it. That and an insatiable drive. That's a great combination. It's a drive you can't coach. Some kids have it or they don't have it, and Lawrence has it in abundance.''
Johnson's father likes to think his son's willingness to push comes down to a simple piece of advice he's offered all his children - Lawrence; daughter Laria, a 24-year-old Marine; Corey, soon to be a Navy man; and Ryan, a rising sophomore at Great Bridge.
``As bad as you want to do something, there are 50 or 100 others who want to do the same thing,'' says the elder Johnson, 46, co-owner of an electrical contracting company. ``At one time I think (Lawrence) thought I was saying that he wasn't going to be able to do something because of the competition. Later, he realized what I was telling him was if 100 want to do it, you have to work harder than the other 99.
``You want to be a millionaire? Well, everybody wants to be a millionaire. What are you going to do to set yourself apart from the others?''
The man they call LoJo on the circuit - a takeoff on legendary track star Florence Griffith-Joyner's ``Flo-Jo'' moniker - is headed toward that rare air. He has signed with the leading track and field agent, Brad Hunt. A medal performance in Atlanta, and Johnson could be an ad blitz waiting to happen.
Youth, manners, looks, intelligence, clean living, a theatrical flair - he connects with a crowd like no other vaulter - and that nickname are all part of Johnson's package.
So is his race. The U.S. has never had an African-American Olympic pole vaulter. It isn't hard seeing Johnson held up as a role model, not to mention as one of this country's most recognizable track personalities, over the next decade.
Time was, though, when Johnson recalls being recognized as some kind of oddball for his choice of events.
``In high school, I remember going to a couple of meets and trying to talk to a couple of girls,'' Johnson says. ``They're like, `No. What do you really do?' ''
Sometimes there were taunts, too, when Johnson showed up at the pole vault pit.
``It's not something that was so extreme that it left me at home at night wondering, `Do I need to change events?' '' Johnson says.
Johnson leans more to economic realities to explain the lack of African-American vaulters. Equipment can cost up to $10,000, which could strap many predominantly black schools, Johnson says. ``But I think there's also that stereotype out there that black guys are sprinters and white guys pole vault.''
It's funny, then, how no white American consistently vaults like Johnson.
``I wasn't surprised he broke my American record,'' says Scott Huffman, one of the three U.S. Olympic vaulters. ``I was surprised that it took him as long as it did. Not only is Lawrence a tremendous athlete, he's a guy that works out as hard as anybody. He wants it more than anybody. That's very evident. He's for real.''
You had to wonder, though, when the results of Johnson's first two European meets following the Olympic Trials surfaced. LoJo turned into Low-Jo. In one meet, he finished eighth, and in the second he failed to clear a height.
That's where Johnson, competing without a coach, presumably was nailed by youth and inexperience.
``He didn't clear that first height and he told me he didn't know what to do to adjust,'' his father says.
That won't happen stateside, says Brown. ``It'll be a tremendous advantage having the Olympics in Atlanta. He won the trials in that pit, he went 19 feet there. He's going to be tough at the Games, regardless of how he did in Europe.''
Regardless of how he does in Atlanta, Johnson figures to change only for the better. He has the outward confidence of a world-class athlete yet an appealing humility.
``Kind of like a Michael Jordan,'' Brown says.
It was charming, then, not obnoxious when Johnson, alone in the competition, had the Penn Relays fans decide with their cheers the height of his next attempt.
It was intriguing when Johnson said he bailed out of a world-record bid the night of his national mark at a small meet in Knoxville because, he says, the time wasn't right to surpass Bubka.
And it was fun when Johnson, wearing wraparound shades at night, clapped his hands, pumped his fist and high-stepped as usual before his vaults to crank up the crowd at the Olympic Trials.
``I think I'm very confident, but I try not to be cocky or too far out there,'' Johnson says. ``I want to keep everything in perspective, keep everything in control, but at the same time let (the crowd) know that it's appreciated and I do enjoy being out there.''
To help her son maintain his priorities, Teena Johnson might move in with him, with his blessing, for a time after the Olympics, not unlike the move Norfolk's Letha Smith made last year for her son, NBA star Joe Smith.
``Till he gets settled for himself,'' Teena Johnson, 47, says. ``He told me last week, `C'mon, Ma.' ''
C'mon, then, and listen to Teena Johnson dream.
``I told him I want the gold. I want to hold it,'' she says, giggling. ``He said, `Mom, when I get it, I'll bring it right over.' '' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot color photos
Lawrence Johnson explores the air up there in a pre-Olympic workout
last week in Knoxville, Tenn.
Lawrence Johnson, America's best in the pole vault, clears the bar
during a training session last week at the University of Tennessee
in Knoxville.
Several hours of practice each evening fuels Johnson's quest for
Olympic gold. Here, he walks off the track after finishing some
sprints.
Johnson, left, and friend C.J. Braden set the bar for another vault
at Tennessee's Tom Black Track.
Mastering vaulting technique results in many failed attempts. The
pole and bar fall as Johnson hits the pad.
Proving his talents aren't limited to the track, Johnson, center,
joins friends C.J. Braden of Chattanooga, left, and Anthony Maples
of Knoxville in a song at the end of his training session. The trio
are in a Knoxville band, called Soja, in which Johnson sings and
plays keyboard.
Graphic
LAWRENCE JOHNSON
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY POLE VAULT
OLYMPIC GAMES by CNB