LONDON, UK - When Michael Johnson flashed through the 200m finish line at the Atlanta Olympics 10 years ago, stopping the clock at the seemingly impossible figures of 19.32, few in the Olympic stadium could believe what they had seen. Few, since, have dared to believe that anyone would come close to running that fast again. Not for decades.

Thanks to Xavier Carter, however, just one decade later the impossible no longer seems such a distance prospect.

Unassailable no more

Carter was 10 when Johnson set his 'Beamonesque' World record. He "was aware of it", he says, but "I didn't sit up in front of the TV to watch it, or anything". The young Xavier - nicknamed 'Peewee' by his grandmother because he was so small, now better known as the 'X-man' - played so many sports at the time that track and field didn't seem that special.

"I didn't think about it that much," he says of Johnson's historic feat. He's certainly aware of it now. Since clocking 19.63 in Lausanne a few weeks ago, the 20-year-old from Louisiana State University has been able to think of little else.

In his first ever professional race Carter wrote himself into the history books as the second fastest half-lap man of all time, and suddenly the athletics world was a-buzz with the possibility that Johnson's place at the top of the all-time list might not be quite so unassailable after all.

Barely a month into his professional career, the Kinesiology and Sports Medicine student already sounds adept at handling the inevitable question. Can you break it? "I feel I can break it," he says. "If not break it, I'll get near to it. It's not so out there it's impossible."

"It's a realistic target," he says, when probed again. "I'm not saying I'm going to break it, but I think I can. I feel I can run faster the more familiar I get with the 200m."

Carter is keen to point out that the race in Lausanne was only his second 200m of the year, his first since April. And, he says, it was far from perfect. Running in lane eight the 1.90m-tall sprinter was "not too comfortable with the curve". I'd prefer lane seven," he says.

There's little chance Carter will be given the outside lane when he runs his third 200m of the year at the Norwich Union London Grand Prix tomorrow night. As in Lausanne, he will face the World silver medallist and fourth placer at Crystal Palace - Wallace Spearmon and Tyson Gay - plus Jamaica's Usain Bolt, 8th in Helsinki last summer, the three men who chased him down the straight in Lausanne.

It may be the same line-up but Carter acknowledges that his performance on 11 July has radically changed the track world's expectations. "I'm a very marked man now," he says. "People are shooting for me. I surprised myself in Lausanne. I didn't think I would achieve what I did so early in my career.

"Tomorrow's the same field and I believe it's going to be another fast night. I will have to run fast to win. People expect me to put on a show. Who knows what can come out of it."

Lured to the sport

Carter has been "running fast to win" since he was 13, seventh grade in American high school parlance. That was when he first started to take track seriously. He admits that athletics was never his first love and at first he wasn't even that good at it. In fact, he was "lured" into it by his father, Ken, as a way to get faster and fitter for his main sporting obsessions: American football, basketball and baseball.

"I was one of the slowest guys at first," he says of his early races as a schoolboy in Melbourne, Florida, where he grew up. "I really wasn't interested in track. You could see there was talent there but I was kind of a lazy kid and just wanted to play football. I would lose.

"Then after a couple of years I thought 'If I'm going to be in it, why not win?' So I began to work and became one of the quickest in the state. The track coach pulled it out of me."

His father, Ken, puts it more bluntly. "He got beat up pretty badly in the first two years," he says. "After that he came to me and said, 'I don't want to lose anymore'. So he started training seriously and after that he only lost two races throughout his high school career."

Amazing versatility

Ken Carter, a former high school football player himself, admits to being in awe of his son's talent. "He's just gifted," he says. "I started noticing he was a good athlete when he was around fifth grade but it was only in seventh grade when he exploded onto the track scene."

His coach at the time, Gary Evans, trained him for 100s, 200s and 400s and by the summer of that year, 1999, Carter was leading the nation at all three distances for his age group. Unusually, he's carried that amazing versatility through his high school years, into college and now into his professional career. In fact, Ken can even remember his son running an 800m at 16, "just to try it", in about 1:58/1:59.

A 'humble' Olympic dream

The decision to turn pro and give up on his potential American football career came as recently as June, shortly after he first set the wider athletics world alight by winning four gold medals - at 100m, 400m and both relays - at the NCAA championships, a feat last achieved by Jesse Owens in 1936.

"It's my dream to run at an Olympics," explains Carter. "I thought I would be in better shape for that if I stuck to track full-time rather than try to play football as well and risk getting hurt.

"I like athletics and American football equally but the Olympics is a dream so I figured I'd leave football until I've done that. I'm not saying I'm going to run the Olympics then quit track, I'm just going to take it as it comes."

So far it's come pretty easily. Being compared to Owens and Johnson within the space of a month would be enough to knock most 20-year- olds off their stride. But the X-Man just seems happy to absorb his new life.

"I figure it's an honour to be spoken of in the same breath as those guys," says the man who's also been described as the 'saviour of athletics' in the United States. "But I don't put a burden on myself. I just like to run fast. I'm a pretty laid back guy and prefer to stay out of the limelight."

That's an assessment his father is happy to agree with. "He's always been humble," says Ken Carter. "We had to make him go and collect medals when he was younger. He just likes running. He doesn't like dwelling on it, or watching it, or reading about it."

Perhaps that humility comes from knowing something of the life he's avoided thanks to his sporting talent. Indeed, some of Carter's old friends are in prison for gang violence and "things of that nature". "I was right there with them," he says. "I could have gone down there with them too. But I did sport and that kept me focused.

"Without that I would have been in jail or dead, because there was pretty much nothing else for me to do. I made the best decisions for me. Some of my friends went down the wrong road, but I had people around me who didn't let me go to the wall."

His father was obviously one of those. "I was never going to let that happen," says Ken. "I told him if he didn't get a sports' scholarship I was going to sign him up for the military."

Shooting or sprinting? It was hardly a tough choice. Now Carter is honing his sights on the 200m, an Olympic gold medal and a certain World record. According to his father, there's little doubt he can break it.

"His future may not be this year, or next season," says Ken. "But he has a great chance to break it. Johnson is his idol, but I tell him, 'Don't focus on it, just run. It'll come.'

"Remember, because he's been playing football, he's never had a full year's track training. Johnson was 28 when he set the record. Xavier is 20. He's got time. I think he'll equal Michael Johnson's accomplishments by the time he's finished."