Christian Coleman on Satruday hit back at US sprinting legend Michael Johnson after powering to a 100m victory at the World Championships in Doha.
Coleman blew away his rivals to take the first major outdoor title of his career, clocking a world-leading personal best of 9.76 seconds at the Khalifa Stadium.
The win cemented Coleman’s status as the man to beat at next year’s Tokyo Olympic Games and elevated the 23-year-old American to the head of a pack of sprinters aiming to be the new face of athletics in the post-Usain Bolt era.
In the eyes of Johnson, Coleman has forfeited the right to be the figurehead of track and field after the missed drugs test controversy that marred his build-up to the championships, but Coleman was unmoved by Johnson’s remarks as he celebrated Saturday’s win.
“Michael Johnson doesn’t pay my bills or sign my checks,” Coleman said. “So I don’t really care what he has to say.”
Coleman was only able to compete in Doha after the case against him was withdrawn because of a technical loophole.
However, Johnson maintains that the odor of wrongdoing will continue to linger around Coleman, even if he avoids a sanction.
“It completely disqualifies him, at this point, from ever being that face of the sport,” Johnson said in a BBC interview this week. “This will follow him, as it should... Christian Coleman was being touted to replace Usain Bolt as the big star of the sport. I don’t think that will happen now. I think that fans of athletics don’t have any tolerance for any sort of doping infraction.”
Coleman gave Johnson’s remarks short shrift though, believing that he will ultimately be judged by his performances on the track.
“I think the face of the sport goes to the people who are putting up the performances,” he told a news conference. “The faces of the sport are going to be the people who are putting up the right times and representing the sport in the right way.”
Coleman rejected suggestions that he would need to do more to work as an ambassador for athletics as penance for the drug test controversy.
“You’re insinuating that something happened — and at the end of the day I did nothing wrong,” he said, repeating his claim that his case was leaked into the public domain before it had been properly adjudicated. “I’m just a young black man living my dream, and it’s kind of disappointing that someone would leak that information to try and smear my reputation.”
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