FIVE DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

You know the really big events in athletics because your heart tells you.

Boom, boom, boom, pounding in your chest, as Linford Christie prepares for the 1992 Olympic 100 metres final, as Jonathan Edwards speeds towards the take-off board at the 1995 world championships.

On 1 August this year, in the sticky evening heat of Atlanta's Centennial Stadium, there was a sense of anticipation which surpassed that of any the previous or subsequent Olympic track sessions.

Everything - the evening, the Games - seemed to centre on one man intent upon a historic achievement: Michael Johnson.

Men had won the 100 and 200 metres at the Games; Alberto Juantorena had taken gold at 400 and 800m in 1976; but no one had ever won the 200 and 400. After convincing officials to alter the schedule to allow him a decent shot at both, the 28-year-old Texan seemed to go out of his way to increase the pressure upon himself.

Four years earlier, as the world 200m champion, Johnson had failed to reach the Olympic final after his preparations had been ruined by food poisoning. Yet, after that devastating experience, here he was again in Atlanta, talking freely about his expectations, even running in golden shoes. Was this hubris about to be punished by the gods?

The first part of his ambition had been accomplished without undue strain three days earlier as he had won the 400m final against a field lacking the injured world record holder Butch Reynolds.

But this race was going to be different, due to the presence of Frankie Fredericks, a man in the form of his life. Two weeks before the Olympics had begun, the Namibian - a double silver medallist at the 1992 Games - had ended Johnson's unbroken sequence of 21 wins over 200m with a narrow victory in Oslo.

After being forced to settle for another silver in the 100m, where he had run to within 0.01sec of the world record earlier in the season, there seemed a possibility that Fredericks might just spoil Johnson's Olympics.

The gun went. A crowd of 82,000 people produced a deep, gathering roar. Boom, boom, boom. And as the two men completed their turn the possibility was still faintly there, even though the American - who runs so upright he seems about to fall over backwards - was ahead.

Then, like a spaceship switching to warp speed, Johnson parted company with his fellow athletes and embraced history.

When this urbane, quietly spoken man glanced across at the digital clock to see his winning time, his expression was almost crazed, 19.32 seconds, a full 0.34sec inside his own outstanding world record.

That earlier run had chipped 0.06sec of Pietro Mennea's 24-year-old mark of 19.72sec. Never before in the history of the event had the official record been lowered by more than 0.2sec.

Many observers felt the only comparable performance was Bob Beamon's stupendous 1968 Olympic long jump of 8.90 metres, which improved the world record by more than a foot. It was a defining moment of the 1996 Olympics.

Fredericks, meanwhile, ran the race of his life to finish in 19.68sec - four metres adrift. "I thought when Michael ran 19.66 it was incredible," Fredericks said. "To run 19.32. I don't know what to say.

There are 82,000 who will. "I was there."