• June 23 down the years

Confirmation of a true Olympic great

Michael Johnson has since seen his 200m record broken © Getty Images

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1996
At the US Olympic trials in Atlanta, Michael Johnson ran 200 metres in 19.66 seconds to break the world record at last. It had been set by Italy's Pietro Mennea in 1979 (September 12) - in the thin air at altitude, which made it so hard to break at sea level. Johnson had come close before, especially in 1995 when he ran 19.79 and in the semi-finals yesterday, when his 19.70 was wind-assisted. Today he enjoyed a dress rehearsal for the Olympics on the same track, where he broke the record again on August 1.

On the same day in American football, the Scottish Claymores completed a worst-to-first comeback by winning the World Bowl at Murrayfield. Having won only two of their ten games the previous year, they beat defending champions Frankfurt Galaxy 32-27. Former Scotland international rugby player Gavin Hastings missed two kicks at goal, but Paul McCallum landed two field goals, including a four-pointer from 52 yards, and Yo Murphy caught three touchdown passes from Jim Ballard.

1981
The longest rally in any tennis match? In the Philadelphia Clay Court Championships, Richard Cohen was match point down against Ken Phelan - so he decided to prolong proceedings as long as possible. Unfortunately, so did Phelan. So the last rally of the match went on a bit. It was quite possibly the longest ever in terms of strokes (there were 2,095 of them) - but not in time elapsed (a mere 29 minutes 25 seconds): see November 13. Phelan won the match when Cohen was too tired to reach his drop shot.

1986
The loss of Barry McGuigan's world featherweight title was a bit of a self-inflicted wound. To get a bigger audience from closed-circuit TV, he and his manager Barney Eastwood accepted a fight in the daytime heat outside Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. The climatic conditions were made for his challenger Steve Cruz, who was born in Texas of Mexican descent, and not for someone with the chip-butty pallor of McGuigan. Cruz's stablemate Don Curry, the world welterweight champion, scratched his head: this was no time and place for a boxer from northern Europe, whereas 'Stevie has been in the heat all his life. He's used to it.' It was a big financial gamble by Eastwood. Sure, extra dollars from more TV viewers, but smaller purses if they lost the title. They were probably in a hurry to break America - and they surely underestimated Cruz, a 22-year-old plumber ranked only No. 9 by the WBA. The 40°C heat sapped McGuigan's strength, his only weapon, and although he was fit enough to go the distance and make it Ring magazine's fight of the year, Cruz knocked him down in the tenth round and McGuigan had to be taken away by ambulance. He didn't fight for a title again, and lost a libel claim against Eastwood after claiming he'd been forced to fight Cruz while he was injured. In 2007 McGuigan won a version of the TV cookery show Hell's Kitchen, 21 years after losing his title in one. Cruz lost his first defence and failed in an attempt to take the WBC title from Britain's Paul Hodkinson in 1992.

1940
Wilma Rudolph was born in Tennessee. When she dominated the sprints at the 1960 Olympics with those long straight legs, it was hard to believe she couldn't walk until she was 11. The 20th of 22 kids, she was a premature baby who weighed only 4½ pounds, then suffered from polio, scarlet fever, and double pneumonia, which left her in a leg brace from the age of six. Her mother made her brothers rub her leg every day until she could walk unaided. When she was 16, she won a bronze medal in the sprint relay at the 1956 Olympics. Four years later, her length of leg gave her a Usain advantage over the other women sprinters, including Britain's Dorothy Hyman (born May 9, 1941), who was second in the 100 metres and third in the 200. Rudolph finished two yards clear in the 100, running a windy 11.0 seconds, 0.3 faster than the world record she equalled in the semi-final. In the 200, the gap was three yards even though she was more than a second slower than her own world record. Gold in the relay completed the sprint treble. She set two official world records in the 100 metres and one in the 200 before retiring at 22.

1922
Walter Hagen won the British Open to become the first golfer to win the three Majors that were around at the time. He shot exactly 300 at Sandwich to win by a stroke from US Open champion Jim Barnes and former British Open winner George Duncan.

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