Johnson Is Doubly Terrific : Track and field: He completes rare sweep by adding 200 to 400 title. Batten sets world record in 400 intermediate hurdles.

GOTEBORG, Sweden —  Sergei Bubka and Michael Johnson are such extraordinary athletes that their historic performances Friday seemed ordinary.

Kim Batten and Tonja Buford produced no such illusion. Everything about their duel in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles--their numerous exchanges of the lead down the stretch, their hopeful lunges at the finish line and especially their times--was compelling.

Ukraine’s Bubka, already established as the best pole vaulter ever, became the only man to win gold medals in all five of track and field’s World Championships, and Johnson added the 200-meter title to the 400 title he won two days earlier to become the first man in the same major international meet to win both events. But Batten and Buford, both Americans, in some ways upstaged the two men, engaging in the most dramatic intermediate hurdles race since, well, two years ago.

In the 1993 World Championships at Stuttgart, Germany, the United States’ Sandra Farmer-Patrick collapsed at the finish line after beating the previous world record in 52.79 seconds but not before pushing Britain’s Sally Gunnell to an even faster 52.74.

With Gunnell and Farmer-Patrick injured and France’s Marie-Jose Perec still learning the event, that was a record no one expected to fall Friday at Ullevi Stadium. Even though Batten, 26, was ranked second in the world last year and Buford, 24, was ranked fifth two years ago, neither had come much closer than one second to Gunnell’s best time.

But this race not only was faster, it was closer. With the two of them challenging each other in the final 100 meters, when the lead changed three times before Batten outleaned Buford at the end, both ran well under the record. Batten, of Rochester, N.Y., was timed in 52.61, Buford, of Dayton, Ohio, in 52.62. Both times were improvements over their previous bests by more than a second. Seemingly in another race, Jamaica’s Deon Hemmings beat the rest of the field for third place in 53.48.

In 21 years that the intermediate hurdles have been officially recognized for women by the International Amateur Athletic Federation, it is the first time that the record has been held by an American. It also is the first record set by an American woman since Florence Griffith Joyner’s 200 during the 1988 Olympic Games at Seoul.

“I had a dream last night that I would break the world record,” said Batten, who underwent an emergency appendectomy in May, one month before she won her third national championship at Sacramento.

“It was the most vivid dream I’ve ever had. I woke up and I was sweating. I was hoping it wouldn’t affect my performance. So I turned on a fan and went back to sleep.”

She also dreamed that she would perform a provocative celebratory dance. That will have to wait for her next world record.

“I didn’t have the courage,” she said.

If anyone figured to break a record Friday, it was Bubka because he has done it 35 times. Although he was not at his best, he made a noble effort. After clearing 19 feet 5 inches to assure his fifth championship since he won the first as a 19-year-old Soviet athlete in 1983 at Helsinki, he tried three times at 20-2, a quarter-inch above his existing record, but could not convert.

While Bubka packed his poles, the main event of the evening, the one that most of the near-capacity crowd in the 45,000-seat stadium no doubt had come to see, was about to commence. It was of such interest that even the discus throwers who were competing at the time hurried to finish. “The hardest thing was not to miss the 200-meter final,” said bronze medalist Vasily Kaptyukh of Belarus.

Johnson’s main competition, defending champion Frankie Fredericks of Namibia, injured his hamstring slightly in Thursday’s first round. The suspense centered around whether Johnson could finally break the record of 19.72 seconds that Italian Pietro Mennea set 16 years ago.

It did not seem likely. This was, after all, Johnson’s eighth race in seven days after running four rounds in the 400 and three in the 200. But headline writers throughout the world are not calling him Magic, or Magique , for nothing.

He came close in the 400 final Wednesday with a 43.39 that was one-tenth of a second off the world record, then came closer still in the 200 with a 19.79, equaling his best time and the fifth-best ever. Just as on Wednesday, however, he gritted his teeth and grimaced when he saw the clock. Then, out of exhaustion and relief, he fell over backward.

“Story of the week, I was very close to the world record,” he said. “I wasn’t disappointed. It was just unbelievable that twice this week I’ve come that close to the world record. But close is not close enough.”

While Johnson, 27, of Dallas, won the 400 by the largest margin ever in a major international event, he had to settle for a 200 victory that was only as decisive as the one he scored during the 1991 World Championships at Tokyo. Fredericks was second in 20.12, the United States’ Jeff Williams third in 20.18. No one has won by more than that at this level since Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics.

“I feel very confident that one if not both of these world records will fall before the end of the summer,” Johnson said.

It will surprise no one if the 400 record falls before the end of next week. Johnson will run that distance Wednesday night at Zurich, Switzerland, where Butch Reynolds set the existing record five years ago.

Before then, however, Johnson, after a well-deserved day off, must return to the track here to run for the United States in the 1,600-meter relay. His credentials are not bad in that event, either. He ran the fastest 400 leg ever two years ago at Stuttgart.