The Thrill of Victory

By Lloyd Johnson
     
It was July 4, 1977, in Stockholm, Sweden: the DN Galan track and field meet. I was two steps behind the leader of the men's 800-meter race coming off the final turn. The crowd of 20,000-plus rose to their feet and began to scream. The electricity in the atmosphere was palpable. Five of the eight people in the race had competed in the 800-meter final of the
      1976 Olympics in Montreal. (My time hadn't been good enough to qualify for that race.)
      But now would I, the American, beat Alberto Juantorena, the Cuban who had won Olympic gold medals in the 800 and 400 meters the year before? The adrenaline rush of that moment was indescribable-it was like taking five of the most exciting things that ever happened to me and multiplying them by 100.
      That incredible moment marked the culmination of my collegiate track career, which had begun so un-spectacularly in 1974. I hadn't been recruited by any major schools, but the USC track coach allowed me to try out for the team. And that meant running 100 miles per week from September through February. I barely made the team, but I still was full of confidence.
      "I'm going to be one of the best 800-meter runners in America," I told my friends, family, and teammates. They laughed at me, saying, "If you aren't in the top ten in Northern California, what makes you think you will be in the top ten in the country?" Some of my teammates even gave me the nickname "Broke Leg" Johnson, because, they said, the only reason someone would run as slow as I did would be because he had a "broke leg."
      Their ridicule only made me work harder, and that was the key to my success: the intense work I did before the season started (100 miles per week from July to September, and two practices a day in the fall and early spring-when everyone else was working out just once a day). I also spent more time in the weight room than the other middle-distance runners did, and I joined the workouts of the sprinters and quarter-milers.
      Without knowing it, I had made myself valuable to my team because I could run four events (400 meters, 800 meters, 1,500 meters, and the 1,600-meter relay). It took three years, but eventually I achieved my goal of being a top 800-meter runner. And when I returned to USC in the fall of 1977, I didn't hear any laughter when my teammates looked at the scrapbook documenting my summer competing in eight countries and 29 cities in 70 days.
      In the 3-year span between the nadir and the zenith of my track career, I learned invaluable lessons about people. I discovered that most people were unwilling to step outside their comfort zone, both professionally and personally. Their initial reaction to new or different ideas was to project their past experiences onto the person proposing them. And that's exactly what happened 20 years later when I got the idea to start the Minority Corporate Counsel Association.
      At that time, many people felt that the number of in-house minority corporate counsel was insignificant; therefore it was counterproductive to chart their advancement. For instance, in 1997 there were fewer than 20 minority general counsel in Fortune 500 companies. But I went ahead anyway and founded the MCCA, a nonprofit organization that has formulated standards to measure the progress of diversity in the legal industry.
      In my three years at the MCCA, I also launched Diversity & the Bar magazine in response to growing interest in the notion that law departments' economic leverage could be harnessed to advance diversity. This bimonthly publication was the first magazine to provide a national platform for charting the progress (as glacial as it may be) of people of color, women, and other minority constituencies in the legal industry. Last year Diversity & the Bar celebrated its tenth anniversary.
      Now back to the race in Stockholm: At the finish line, I placed fifth. But earlier that year I'd set a USC school record, and I was part of the NCAA Championship 1,600-meter relay team that also broke a USC record. Ranked eighth in the United States among 800-meter runners for 1977, I had realized my original goal to crack the top ten. I went from walk-on to All American, so I guess you could say I got the last laugh.
     
      Lloyd Johnson is the managing director of Messick & Johnson, a recruiting firm that places lawyers.
     

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