Michael Johnson, 43, is one of the most pre-eminent athletes of all time. He has four Olympic and nine World Championship gold medals to his name. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, he won both the 200m and 400m (the only athlete in history to do this at the same Games), and his world record for 200m of 19.32 stood for 12 years until Usain Bolt broke it at the Beijing Games of 2008. He still holds the world record for 400m - 43.18 seconds.

Johnson voluntarily returned his 4x400m relay gold medal from the Sydney Games of 2000 after a team-mate admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs earlier in his career.

Following his retirement, Johnson became a sports pundit with the BBC and has since established himself as one of the most popular and renowned sports broadcasters in the UK. The BBC's coverage of Olympic Games and World and European track-and-field Championships is hinged around his contributions.

He writes a regular column for The Times and owns his own sports training facility, the Michael Johnson Performance Centre, in Texas.

In 2002, he was awarded the Television Pundit of the Year Award by the Royal Television Society.

He lives in San Francisco, California.