Olympic team, is shown in Los Angeles on August 6, 1960.Īfter winning the national decathlon championship in 1956, Johnson was the favorite for the Olympics in Melbourne, but pulled a stomach muscle and strained a knee while training. At a welcome home meet afterward in Kingsburg, California, he set his first world record, breaking the mark of two-time Olympic champion and his childhood hero Bob Mathias.Īs a freshman at UCLA, where he received academic and athletic scholarships, Johnson won gold at the the 1955 Pan Am Games, and set a world record of 7,985 points. Johnson won a gold medal at the Pan American Games in 1955 while competing in just his fourth decathlon. and winner of the decathlon at the 1960 Summer Olympics holds the torch aloft to light the Olympic flame during the opening ceremony for the XXIII Olympic Games on July 28 1984, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Yang of Taiwan and Vasily Kuznetsov of the former Soviet Union. Johnson set world records in the decathlon three different times amid a fierce rivalry with his UCLA teammate C.K. flag at the 1960 Games and lighting the torch at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to open the 1984 Games. His Olympic career included carrying the U.S. Johnson was among the world's greatest athletes from 1955 through his Olympic triumph in 1960, winning a national decathlon championship in 1956 and a silver medal at the Melbourne Olympics that same year.
He died at his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, according to family friend Michael Roth. Kennedy's assassin in 1968, died Wednesday at age 86. Rafer Johnson, who won the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics and helped subdue Robert F.
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