USATF mourns loss of Olympic Champion Rafer Johnson

 
Johnson was the flagbearer for Team USA at the Rome Olympic Games and was the cauldron lighter for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. In 1968 he helped apprehend Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, and he later called that murder one of the most devastating moments of his life. He was a member of the inaugural class of his sport's national hall of fame in 1974.
 
A native of Texas, Johnson was born in Hillsboro on August 18, 1934, and moved to California when he was in middle school. The family settled near Fresno in Kingsburg, where Johnson was an excellent athlete in football, baseball, basketball and track.
 
One of the greatest all-around track and field athletes in history, Johnson competed equally well in several events while a student at UCLA, where he also played basketball under legendary coach John Wooden, and quite naturally made his mark in the decathlon.
 
An outstanding sprinter and long jumper, he gravitated to the decathlon after seeing two-time Olympic champion Bob Mathias compete in 1948 and '52. Johnson won two California high school decathlon titles and by 1955, in his fourth attempt at the event, he scored 7,608 points, displacing Mathias as world record holder.
 
That same year, he won the decathlon at the Pan-American Games. In 1956, he qualified for the Olympic team in both the long jump and decathlon, but because of a knee injury, he limited himself to the 10-event competition. At Melbourne, he finished second to fellow American and Hall of Famer Milt Campbell.
 
Johnson never lost again. He won three National AAU titles from 1956 to 1960 and his duels with the USSR's Vasiliy Kuznetsov and Taiwan's C.K. Yang, also a UCLA teammate, were some of the greatest in track history. Johnson capped his career by winning the 1960 Olympic championship in a world record performance.
 
Winner of the 1960 Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete, Johnson retired to begin to work for President John F. Kennedy's Peace Corps. Like many other decathlon stars, he later became a sportscaster, movie actor and a successful businessman. He was involved in numerous philanthropic efforts and was integral in founding the California Special Olympics.
 
Married to his wife Betsy for 49 years, the couple had two children who achieved elite athlete status. Johnson's daughter, Jenny Johnson-Jordan, was an Olympian in beach volleyball in 2000, and his son, Josh, was an all-America javelin thrower for UCLA. His brother, Jimmy, was an NFL Hall of Fame inductee after a long career with the San Francisco 49ers.
 
Services are pending.