By Seth Johnson and Marshall Tempest
Reporters
Jumpin’ Joe Johnston of Apopka brought home the hardware after competing last week in the World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships held in Gainesville, winning two gold medals and a silver medal.
“If you live long enough, your dreams can come true,” Johnston said in an interview this week.
Johnston, 81, won in the 60-meter hurdles and pole vault and earned second in the high jump. He also competed in three other events: the 60-meter dash, 200-meter dash and long jump.
The World Masters Athletics (WMA) is an international athletic competition for adults 35 years and older. It hosts an indoor championship on odd numbered years and an outdoor championship on even numbered years. The eight-day competition in Gainesville marked the first time the indoor championships have been held in the United States.
George Fields, another Apopka resident, also competed for Team USA in the 35- to 39-year-old long jump division. He had the third highest qualifying distance with 6.8 meters heading into the competition but failed to hit the same distance in the competition, finishing sixth with a top jump of 6.02 meters.
Johnston’s first event was the 60-meter dash. He finished second in his heat to advance to the final. But no one in the field had a chance to catch Team USA’s Kenton Brown.
Brown finished the heat in 8.89 seconds to earn a championship record, just a hundredth of a second short of a World Masters Athletics record. In the final, Brown broke the WMA record with a time of 8.76 seconds. Johnston finished 7th with a 10.89 time.
Johnston also fell short in the 200-meter dash before finding his groove in the last three days of competition.
On Friday, he won the pole vault competition after clearing 2.3 meters (7 feet, 6.5 inches). On Saturday, he snagged silver in the high jump with a 1.17-meter clearance and fourth in the long jump with a 3.02-meter jump.
Johnston returned to the track on Sunday to clinch the gold in the 60-meter hurdles, finishing in 12.32 seconds.
The medals will join a store of other trophies that Johnston has collected, including setting many records in the Florida Senior Games. In the 2024 games held in December, Johnston earned five medals (a 1st place, three 2nd places and a 3rd place) in long jump, high jump, 200-meter dash, 100-meter dash and 50-meter dash.
Johnston is a long-time Apopka resident and was once a physical education teacher and track and field coach for Apopka High School. Before that, he was just a kid that loved pole vaulting. His love for flying through the air brought him all the way to college, where he competed at a small school in Arkansas.
Johnston was part of the early masters track and field movement that began in the mid-1970s and created competitive opportunities for athletes as they aged.
“Find something that you love so much you want to do it every day,” Johnston said.
Johnston trains in his homemade facility, coined the Joe Dome by his daughter, featuring multiple pole-vaulting stations. He says that he is always in the Joe Dome but trains about two to three times a week. The Joe Dome also serves as a training space for local athletes, including pole vaulters from the high school team who lack their own pit.
Johnston said he still trains and competes because he loves doing it so much. It’s also important to him that he stays active and healthy at his age. His love for fitness, pole vaulting, track and field and their respective communities have kept him competing and training.
He likened the care needed for one’s body to the care an expensive car warrants.
“If you had a new Lamborghini and it was the only car you’d ever get, how would you take care of it?” Johnston said. “Well, that’s how you should treat your body.”
The World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships started in 2004 and feature a host of track and field events, but the organization has held other championships since the 1970s. Alachua County won the bid to host the indoor championships in 2024 after another site fell through.
Americans used their home court advantage and arrived in numbers with 1,457 athletes competing. Canada had the second largest contingent with 214 athletes followed by Great Britain and Northern Ireland with 181. Florida residents accounted for 274 athletes competing for multiple countries.
With large numbers, America swept the medal count, winning 557 medals. Great Britain and Northern Ireland came in second with 93 medals and Germany with 70 medals.
In total, just under 4,000 athletes representing 99 countries arrived in Alachua County for the championships, and the county estimated around 9,000 total attendees.
