Despite Usoc Honor, Johnson Bemoans Track’s Weak Kick

Tiger Woods is hot. Michael Johnson is not.

And Johnson, the winner of an unprecedented Olympic gold medal sweep and perhaps the greatest athlete in the world today, knows that underscores the place track and field holds in American sports.

“I think there’s a lot of potential for track in the United States,” he said. “But it’s not like Europe.”

The U.S. Olympic Committee honored Johnson on Wednesday as its top male athlete of the year, the latest recognition of his feats at the Summer Games - the first man to win both the 200 and 400 meters in the same Olympics, shattering the 200 world record.

But the only sign American sports fans are likely to get of Johnson right now are images from the past - snippets in year-end highlight tapes or perhaps a magazine photo of his summertime celebrations in Atlanta.

In the U.S. sports boom of the 1990s, track is a no-show.

Meanwhile, Woods, the 20-year-old PGA Tour rookie with the $60 million endorsement package, peers out from the covers of national news magazines and repeatedly pops up in TV commercials.

On Tuesday, despite a resume that remains more potential than performance, he was named sportsman of the year by Sports Illustrated, an honor that usually goes to Super Bowl quarterbacks or Olympic gold medalists.

Johnson, with two of those gold medals, said money talks.

“Tiger Woods signed the contract this year … for $60 million - that got him a lot of press,” Johnson said. “And unfortunately, in this society, we a lot of times equate sports greatness with how much money you make… . Sports Illustrated gives a lot more coverage to golf than track and field.”

Not once in a conference call that focused on ways that track could be better promoted in the United States did Johnson criticize Woods or the publicity he has received.

This was the second straight year and third time in the last four years that Johnson was voted sportsman of the year in balloting by USOC officials, athletes and reporters.

He received 80 of 104 first-place votes and 929 points, almost twice as many as swimmer Jeff Rouse, the runner-up with 519 points.