By Tim Layden

BEIJING -- It remains the most arresting track and field moment I have ever witnessed live.

Better than either of Usain Bolt's world records this year. Better than Jonathan Edwards' 60-foot triple jump at Göteborg, Sweden, at the 1995 worlds. Better than Haile Gabrselassie holding off Paul Tergat to the win the 10,000 meters at the Sydney Olympics. Better than the 800-meter Oregon sweep at the Olympic trials at Eugene's Hayward Field two months ago.

And don't get me wrong: Those things -- and many others -- were breathtaking and memorable.

None of them resonates like Michael Johnson's 200-meter gold medal and generation-skipping world record of 19.32 seconds on the night of Aug. 1, 1996, at the Atlanta Olympic Games.

The gold medal came on top of Johnson's 400-meter victory, fulfilling a double-gold quest he had undertaken not long after food poisoning sabotaged his '92 Olympics. It came after Johnson had chased Pietro Mennea's 17-year-old world record of 19.72 seconds and finally taken it down with a 19.66 at the '96 Olympic trials.

The entire experience was surreal. Johnson wobbled a step from the blocks, ripped through the turn marginally in front of the very dangerous Frankie Fredericks of Namibia and Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago and then exploded in the stretch. As always, spectators watched Johnson blast through the line and then turned back to the clock, which froze 19.32. Not since Bob Beamon jumped 8.90 in 1968 has a time looked more incongruous.

It seemed at that moment -- and until very recently -- to be unassailable in any near future. "I remember thinking about it that night,'' said Boldon, who took the bronze medal. "And I said to myself, 'When I die, that's still going to be the record.''' Boldon was 22 years old at the time. No sprinter has come within three-tenths of a second since that night.

Now, of course, there is talk that it will happen Wednesday night at the Olympic Stadium known as the Bird's Nest, when Jamaica's remarkable Bolt races in the Olympic final one day before his 22nd birthday. After all, Bolt has previously been a 200-meter specialist (World Junior champion at age 16) and he has run 19.67 this year, into a modest headwind. That, and the world saw how easily he ran a world record 9.69 seconds to win the gold medal last Saturday night in the 100 meters, while celebrating for the last 15 meters.

The case can be made that Bolt is ready to take down MJ's record long before it's time. In this week's Sports Illustrated, I quote Jamaican-born Canadian Donovan Bailey, the '96 Olympic 100-meter champion, as saying, "If he gets someone to push him through the corner [turn], we could see something unbelievable. I'm thinking between 19.22 and 19.26.''

Bolt is already a respectable and a solid turn runner. And he will have somebody to push him through the curve. "Shawn,'' said U.S. 200-meter runner Wallace Spearmon, referring to '04 Olympic deuce champion Shawn Crawford, who always takes it out.

On Tuesday in Beijing, I sought out and talked to the three men who landed on the medal stand in that Atlanta race: Johnson, Fredericks and Boldon. They share an appreciation for the race, skepticism that Bolt will take down the record in the Games and various levels of certain that he will get it eventually.

"I think he'll run 19.5-something,'' said Johnson, who is in Beijing as Jeremy Wariner's manager. "Will he be able to sustain what we saw the other day, which was incredible? I just don't think he's been doing the type of training he needs to do that. I put what he did the other day down to the fact that the guy has got an incredibly long stride and he's figured out how to make that long stride technically efficient.

"Speed endurance is something different, where you've got to hold that speed for a much longer time and that doesn't come into play in the 100 meters,'' Johnson said. "It becomes an endurance issue. The 200 is just a different feel.

"But he's run in the 19.6s already this year, and he's going to run faster here,'' said Johnson. "And now, eventually, does he run faster than 19.32? I think it's inevitable.''

Fredericks was Johnson's foil in '96, having beaten him in Oslo, Norway -- 19.82 to 19.85 -- just before the Games. Fredericks was a world champion, an Olympic silver medalist and a fast, reliable performer. And he was in a lane outside Johnson in the Olympic final.

"Michael was running against somebody who had just beaten him and on a track where he had already broken a very old world record,'' said Fredericks. "This made for very good conditions for him to run fast.''

Fredericks and Boldon both recall that Johnson ran the turn 100 in 10.12 seconds. Fredericks was close behind in 10.14 and Boldon next in 10.19. Then Johnson blew out the last 100 meters in 9.20 seconds (obviously with no block start to slow him down). "We all ran an extremely good bend, but Michael ran away from me in the final 100 meters,'' said Fredericks. "Nobody else ever did that to me before in my entire career. But I feel blessed and happy that I was part of such a great race.

Fredericks, who is also in Beijing as a member of the International Committee, hesitates to anoint Bolt. "At the time, in 1996, I thought that Michael's record would stand for a long time,'' said Fredericks. "It could still stand for a long time. There is no guarantee.''