MY BACKGROUND AS AN ATHLETE HELPED ME RECOVER FROM STROKE – OLYMPIC LEGEND, MICHAEL JOHNSON

– Oma Akatugba 

Olympic legend, Michael Johnson is arguably one of the greatest athletes of all time. In 2018, he suffered a stroke that affected his left side which he has recovered from. I met him at the 2020 Laureus World Sports Awards held in Berlin, Germany. He was gracious enough to share a few words about his recovery.

It was very good to see that he survived the ailment, he feels good generally and says “I was fortunate to make a quick recovery and now back to same old same old Micheal.” His recovery journey is a long story which his athletics background also helped; “You know generally strokes happen and then it’s all about the recovery from there. So for my situation I was fortunate to get medical treatment quickly and get into rehabilitation quickly and my background as an athlete helped as well. So here I am able to hopefully inspire the people who have had either as a stroke or other ailments, I help them to be able to recover and get their livelihood back.”

As an Olympic legend who smashed records and set few others, he doesn’t miss the sport because he’s still involved with sports in so many different ways, through his company Michael Johnson Performance where they work in support of athletes around the world and all different kinds of sports, use sports to help European and people around the world to improve their lives, he works for BBC as a pundit talking on sports as well; “Everything that I do is related to sports, so for that reason, I don’t have to miss it.”

Micheal Johnson won four Olympic gold medals and eight World Championships gold medals in the span of his career, as well as holding several records and as a consequence, was wildly regarded as the greatest Olympian in history.

On whether he considers himself as the greatest Olympian of all time, he said; “I consider myself Michael, that’s an argument for everyone else to make and that’s a great thing about sports, you ask ten different people and they’re gonna give you ten different answers and they are gonna have a fantastic debate about it.” That’s quite humble from a legend who either won gold or he didn’t participate.