Michael Johnson shuts down Tyreek Hill’s Olympic dream: ‘He knows what his sport is’
Kansas City Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill is an electric football player, using his blazing speed to burn defenses on a weekly basis.
Hill’s speed is such that he even floated out the idea of trying to compete as a sprinter in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo during Super Bowl week.
Count Olympic great Michael Johnson as the latest to shoot down that pipe dream for Hill. Retired sprinter Usain Bolt said the same thing earlier this week.
Johnson needed a split-second when asked if Hill could possibly compete in the Olympics.
“No,” Johnson told the Star-Telegram at his MJP Media Day on Wednesday. “With all due respect to Tyreek Hill, he’s a fantastic football player ... but you can write the expression on my face.”
Johnson looked mildly amused, and slightly annoyed, by the notion that a football player could compete in the Olympics. That even goes for Hill, who recorded the fastest speed in an NFL game this past season per Next Gen Stats.
“He knows what his sport is,” Johnson added. “That sort of thing picks up steam from other people saying, ‘Oh, he can be in the Olympics.’”
Johnson and his crew at MJP are training 28 players for the NFL Combine later this month, and several others for pro days in the coming weeks. The 40-yard dash is a significant determining factor for these players’ draft stocks in the coming weeks.
But there’s a drastic difference between training a football player for a sprint they’ll run a few times to that of an Olympian who has been perfecting his craft for years.
And the same can be said for sprinters who feel they can make a seamless transition into another sport.
“Honestly the sport is much more complex than people think,” said Johnson, who won four gold medals in his Olympic career. “These guys are all fast and they’re struggling to pick up the concept of a simple start position. Simple to me. Not simple for them.
“Just like if I went in and tried to be a running back. It looks simple, just take the ball and avoid the defense. It looks simple. It’s not simple.
“None of these sports are simple,” he continued. “At a world-class level, nothing is simple. To be a world-class athlete in any sport, you have to have a tremendous amount of experience and you probably have to have been doing that since you were kid.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 1:18 PM.
