Bob Mathias

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... w_05092006



Bob Mathias

(Filed: 05/09/2006)

Bob Mathias, who has died aged 75, won the decathlon title at the 1948 Olympics in London, eight weeks after taking up the event as a 17-year old schoolboy.

In the early summer of that year, Mathias's athletics coach at Tulare High School, California, suggested that his protégé take up the decathlon, having been impressed by his winning performances in the discus and the shot in school competitions. "Sounds great, Coach," replied Mathias. "What's the decathlon?"

Two weeks later he was taking part in his first 10-discipline event, at the Southern Pacific Games. He had never thrown a javelin, pole-vaulted, attempted the long jump or run 1,500 metres, and his entire knowledge of the necessary techniques was derived from a manual that his coach had given him. Mathias won the competition easily.



Later that month he travelled across America to take part in the national athletics championships in New Jersey, the trip paid for by a whip-round between his school friends. He duly defeated the three-time victor, Irv Mondschein, and found himself on the boat to London.

At Wembley Mathias was greeted by heavy rain and wind. He struggled to cope with the conditions — cars were brought into the stadium to illuminate the gloom with their headlights — and, in what was only his third decathlon, his technique was found wanting by the experts.

"He gripped the spear like a guy killing a chicken," wrote one journalist. "He went over the vault like a guy falling out of a moving car, and his high jump looked like a guy leaving a banana peel. All he did was win."

And win Mathias did, becoming the youngest ever victor in an Olympic track or field competition, a record that remains unsurpassed. The factory sirens and car horns of Tulare greeted news of his gold medal with a 45-minute paean of joy, and he returned home to 200 offers of marriage. When asked how he would celebrate his triumph, he replied that he might start shaving.

Robert Bruce Mathias was born on November 17 1930 and grew up at Tulare, a farming town in the San Joaquin Valley. As a child he was anaemic, and was prescribed a special diet of liver pills and regular rests.

He fell prey to scarlet fever, whooping cough and measles. His first sign of athletic prowess came when he soared over high jump heights that his brother, who was three years older, found forbidding.

After his Olympic win, Mathias enrolled at Stanford University, and played full-back on the college's football team for two years. He was voted America's greatest amateur athlete, and was offered a contract by the Washington Redskins football team.

He preferred, however, to defend his Olympic title, and arrived in Helsinki in 1952 some three inches taller and 15 pounds heavier than when he had won in London. He was now also the world record holder.

Though hampered by a thigh injury, and by expectations that he had not had four years earlier, Mathias put in the most dominant performance in Olympic decathlon history, outdistancing his rivals by the extraordinary margin of 912 points. He became the first man to retain the title, and the only one to have done so apart from Daley Thompson.

After spending two years in the US Marines, the good-looking Mathias began to capitalise on his fame by appearing in a television series, The Troubleshooters, and in films with the likes of Jayne Mansfield and Victor Mature. In 1954 he played himself in The Bob Mathias Story.

When he announced his intention of competing at the 1956 Olympics, however, he was abruptly told by the American athletics authorities that they considered he had forfeited his amateur status by accepting acting roles and endorsements.

Disgusted, he walked away from his event at the age of 25 and as world record holder, undefeated in every decathlon that he had taken part in.

In 1966 Mathias was elected to Congress as a Republican representing Fresno, California. He held his seat for eight years, establishing a reputation for economic competence, but was voted out of office in 1974 during the backlash against the party after Watergate.

He later said that he had found the transition from being admired as an athlete to being plotted against by his fellow politicians the most difficult challenge of his life.

From 1977 to 1983 he was the first director of America's Olympic training centre, and was afterwards involved in various national fitness initiatives. Latterly he had been undergoing treatment for cancer. He died on September 1.

Bob Mathias is survived by his second wife, Gwen, and by a son and three daughters.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.