Move Over Flo Jo, Here Comes Lo Jo

By Mike Downey

June 17, 1996 12 AM PT

ATLANTA — Lawrence Johnson can fly nine or 10 feet higher than Michael Jordan, but isn’t famous for it yet. He won’t be for a few more weeks, until he represents the United States in the pole vault at the Summer Olympics and maybe lands a shoe brand or a Wheaties box of his own.

“I would definitely have to say that it’s a great feeling to become the first African-American ever to vault in the Olympics,” Johnson said after securing a place in history Sunday night by winning his event at the U.S. Olympic trials. “But I want to be the best pole vaulter in the world, not the best black pole vaulter.

“It’s another barrier to be broken, but my dreams and aspirations go far beyond that.”

Johnson, 22, a University of Tennessee senior who has acquired the nickname “Lo Jo,” could become an overnight sensation just as Florence Griffith-Joyner once made America familiar with the name “Flo Jo,” as soon as an Olympic flame burns here next month and he begins jumping right into people’s living rooms. Remember the name. Michael Johnson: track. Lawrence Johnson: field.

With an engaging personality and everything else he has going for him, all Lo Jo needs is to upset world record holder Sergei Bubka or become the first American to clear 20 feet, and people could be talking pole-vaulting in a way they haven’t since the days of Bob Richards or Bob Seagren.

Americans were naturally busy watching basketball Sunday night and golfers, soccer players and baseball players most of the afternoon. Television coverage of what Johnson did here Sunday night was negligible, but just wait until the Olympics begin and NBC turns him into must-see TV.

You’ll believe a peacock can fly.

Lo Jo’s fingernails are shorter than Flo Jo’s and unpainted, but he wears orange apparel (his school colors) and amber-tinted glasses. Johnson also is the sort of young man who can say with a straight face, “I think everyone dreams of flying, and pole vaulting is as close as you can get to flying. It’s just the little kid in me. You think of Peter Pan or Superman. It’s a miraculous event.”

He cleared 19 feet 1/4 inch here Sunday in the same stadium where the Olympics will be held, a place so windy that vaulters are talking about it like it’s Chicago. Johnson missed three attempts at 19-4 1/4, but no one else even tried to go that high.

Johnson’s personal best is 19-7 1/2, the highest vault ever by an American. No one from this country lost an Olympic pole vault until 1972, but no American has won it since.

Can Lo Jo win?

You bet your sweet Bubka.

“Bubka’s human,” Johnson says. “He deserves a challenge.”

How high can Lo Jo go?

“I’ve done some things in practice,” he says. “But that’s between me and my coach.”

Looking for all the advice he can get, Johnson brashly went right up to Bubka at a meet last summer in Italy and asked him for help on his runway approach. Bubka gave him a tip that paid off immediately.

Encouraged, Johnson went back to ask about something else.

“He looked at me and said, ‘No speak the English,’ ” Lo Jo said, laughing.

The son of a hurdler, Johnson never tried vaulting until he was 14 years old in Norfolk, Va., and found himself on a high school squad overstocked in the hurdles. He began preparing for the decathlon, but Dan O’Brien, a top U.S. decathlete, advised him to concentrate on one thing for now.

Johnson compares the feeling of flying to “the tremendous rush you get, like the initial drop of a roller coaster.”

He became NCAA indoor champion as a sophomore, then outdoor champ in 1995.

“I wasn’t surprised when Lawrence broke my American record,” said Scott Huffman, who placed third to also make the U.S. squad. “I was just surprised it took him as long as it did.”

“He’s for real,” runner-up Jeff Hartwig agreed.

Lawrence Johnson twinkled like a friend of Peter Pan’s when he heard that.

* SURPRISES ABOUND

A number of lesser-known track athletes qualified for the U.S. Olympic team. C10