Bailey’s Agents Might Try Splitting Difference, Challenging Johnson

Donovan Bailey’s agents are toying with the idea of matching the Olympic 100-meter champion against U.S. star Michael Johnson over 150 meters.

“It’s purely speculative at this stage,” Ray Flynn, one of the Bailey’s agents, said Tuesday. “We haven’t gone past just the idea.”

Bailey, of Oakville, Ontario, won the Olympic 100 with a world-record time of 9.84 seconds. Johnson won the 200 in a world-record 19.32 and took the 400 in an Olympic-record 43.49.

“It only came to the fore because American TV was so pro-Michael and the commentators were so full of the fastest man in the world sort of thing,” Flynn said. “They were adding the 100-meter times of Donovan and equating them with what Johnson was running. It’s completely ridiculous.

Flynn said he and partner Mark Block haven’t talked to Johnson’s agent, Brad Hunt.

“At some stage it may come to fruition, but at this stage we’ve just now finished the Olympic Games and we have a European season to finish out, so there are other priorities at this moment,” Flynn said.

NBC’s Olympics coverage attracted 209 million viewers, more than any event in U.S. television history, and reached 91.7 percent of the nation’s 88 million households with television, the network said.

On average, the 17-day coverage earned a 21.6 rating and 41 share, a 26 percent increase over the coverage of the same events at the 1992 Games in Barcelona.