Shanghai: Track-and-field great Michael Johnson says athletics bosses must unearth more personalities such as sprint superstar Usain Bolt to boost the sport’s flagging popularity.

Johnson concedes the sport ‘needs help’ and called on the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) to devise a concerted marketing strategy to engage a younger audience more interested in other sports.

An obsession with the ultra-charismatic and successful Bolt, the legendary 100-metre and 200-metre runner, does not help matters, the American legend feels.

Added to this, he admits there is widespread negativity attached to athletics following a number of doping scandals.

Speaking in Shanghai, China on the sidelines of Laureus awards ceremony, the four-time Olympic champion said: “I do think about that and hear that a lot and I think those two, in all honesty, those are the two things I hear most where the blame is put: All of the negativity and there are no personalities.

“I think our sport makes it very difficult for you guys to actually write about people who may have personality or people who may be potential stars of the sport because we don’t put them in front of you. We just keep pushing Usain Bolt on you.

“Then we expect that you guys are actually going to go and find other people with personalities.”

Currently Bolt and Justin Gatlin, who returned to athletics in 2010 following a four-year doping ban, are the only recognisable figures in the sport’s marquee event, the 100 metres.

“It’s not very good right now,” Johnson said of the lack of competition for the high-profile pair.

“Bolt set the bar so high and I don’t think he’s going to run those times anymore – he’s come down a little bit – and then Gatlin’s still running the times he was running a few years ago. It’s a little bit stale. It’s not this like this fresh, new thing. And yes, [Bolt’s compatriot, Yohan] Blake has been injured.”

Are radical changed needed, such as ditching the likes of discus and shot put for new and more exciting disciplines?

Johnson said: “I don’t think it’s that simple of saying, ‘Hey, let’s just do this’. I think it’s a matter of actually really taking and really serious approach to understanding, ‘What do people want to see?’.

“The sport will need to invest in understanding and gathering that information and going about this in the best way.

“We can all sit here and I can sit here and say it’s because I participated in the sport at a high level that, ‘We should do this’, and then you guys will go off and write that and everybody will say, ‘Well, Michael said it, so we should do it’.

“Actually, I wish it worked that way. But, seriously, it’s going to take a really serious approach to understanding what would work and what wouldn’t work.”

He added: “I would not suggest that the sport just make these kinds of drastic decisions: ‘Let’s take this out and let’s take that out, because we think that people don’t want to see the discus’.

“We may find that we’re wrong. Probably not.”