Rafer Johnson was one event away from winning the 1960 Olympic decathlon in Rome.

Yet he had to finish one of his least favorite events, the 1,500-meter race, within 10 seconds of a much better distance runner.

He was leading after nine events. Now he'd have to run one his best against Taiwan's C.K. Yang.

"I stuck to him like a shadow, dogging his footsteps stride for stride," Johnson wrote in his autobiography, "The Best That I Can Be." "About midway through the race, C.K. picked up the pace. I stayed with him, on his inside shoulder, a couple of strides behind."

Johnson kept up the pressure, even though his strength was rapidly waning. Using every bit of energy he had left, he sprinted after Yang in the final lap, finishing just two strides and 1.2 seconds behind him.

Not only had he won the gold medal and fulfilled his dream — he'd also broken the Olympic decathlon record. He already had won a silver medal for the same event at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, even with an injured knee and torn stomach muscle.

Johnson, now 71, was no stranger to injuries. In 1959, he suffered a major back injury in a car accident. The pain was so great he couldn't attend his graduation exercises from UCLA. He had a year to get back into shape before the Olympics, and he knew he had to work hard.

"He could not so much as jog until February of 1960," wrote Cordner Nelson in "Track and Field: The Great Ones." "Then he spent two months of torturous conditioning. He walked and jogged as long as six hours a day."

Johnson's athletic abilities and competitive nature were evident from an early age. As a youngster in Hillsboro, Texas, he always wanted to be the first or fastest, even when he and the neighborhood kids were just playing.

The family moved to Kingsburg, Calif., when Johnson was 9 years old. Following his passion for competition, he became an all-around athlete at Kingsburg High School, earning varsity letters in baseball, basketball, football and track.

Before his junior year, his track coach took him to watch Bob Mathias compete at the 1952 Olympic decathlon trials down the road in Tulare. Mathias had won the gold medal at the 1948 Olympics.

Johnson hadn't witnessed a decathlon, though he'd been competing in many of the events. He sized up the athletes — and felt he could beat most of them. His coach thought the same thing.

"On the way home, Coach Dodson said that if I were to devote myself to the decathlon I could be the next Bob Mathias," Johnson wrote. "My athletic ambition had been burning, and I'd been hoping to find a specialty in which I could be the best."

Doing It All

Deciding to pursue this new challenge, he committed to the decathlon, composed of 10 contests. This meant learning new events — the javelin and pole vault — and improving in all the others.

He also had to practice the 400 and 1,500 meters, though he loathed distance running.

The hard work paid off. He placed first in the state high school decathlon championships in his junior and senior years. Though he spent hours honing his track skills, he still found time for the other sports. And he didn't neglect his studies.

"Determined to do as well in class as I did on the field, I had to work very hard in high school and to organize my time efficiently," he wrote. "I made a key decision: to study with the smartest kids in every subject."

In sports, working out with others kept him motivated and helped improve his strengths and weaknesses. He figured the same applied to academics. The result? Straight A's in nearly every subject in high school.

Due to his athletic and academic prowess, Johnson received many scholarship offers from colleges across the country. He declined a football scholarship from UCLA — but accepted an academic scholarship that didn't bind him to one sport. This way, he could focus on track, but perhaps still play basketball or football.

College track meets didn't have decathlons, but Johnson found a way around that. He entered up to six events to maintain his versatility.

His first non-UCLA event was the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City. The altitude change (7,600 feet above sea level) made it difficult for most of the athletes to get as much oxygen as they were used to.

Johnson kept his cool. Instead of worrying about the altitude and training adjustments for the decathlon, he focused on giving his best effort in each event. He steadily built a lead over the first nine contests.

Many athletes had already gotten carried off the field during these events. And the final event, the dreaded 1,500, still lay ahead.

To cover all his bases, he sought advice from Mal Whitfield, a competitor and two-time Olympic gold medalist. Even though Johnson was in first place, he wanted to learn more so he could be better prepared.

"I believe that good learning habits helped me in everything I did," he wrote. "In sports I always felt there was more to learn, and I looked for information wherever I could find it — from coaches, teammates, even opponents."

Record Breaker

Whitfield advised Johnson to set a comfortable pace he could stick with. Smart advice. Johnson jogged steadily to finish third, and that clinched it. Given his lead going into the race, he captured the decathlon — and set a Pan Am record.

It was just the start of his record-setting career. Back in Los Angeles that spring, he broke three UCLA freshman records and tied two others. At the Amateur Athletic Union's Central California championships, held in his hometown of Kingsburg, he broke the world record that Mathias set in 1952.

How could he keep breaking records?

For one, he analyzed his skill level for each event and came up with a strategy. Since he felt the first three sequences were among his best, he'd strive to build a substantial lead in those. That way, he wasn't pressured during the fourth event — the high jump — one of his weakest.

Such determination came from how he competed in the classroom.

"Good study habits also helped me concentrate on the field," he wrote. "I could block out distractions and stay focused on what I had to do at every moment, no matter what was going on around me or what had happened a few minutes earlier."

He also continually searched for ways to improve his conditioning. During the summer, instead of resting after the physically grueling school year, he worked at a car dealership in Kingsburg. There, he helped demolish and rebuild part of the building. He felt the hard labor, such as lifting, carrying and hammering, would help build strength for the shot put and discus.

Johnson also ran sprints, and jogged around the high school track and across fields, to keep up his speed and endurance.

His strong desire to win pushed him to excel — and helped him avoid many losses. As long as he gave each event and competition his all, he could accept defeat. But it didn't take away from his desire to win or hatred of losing.

"It simply made me a stronger, more focused competitor," he wrote. "It motivated me to prepare hard for each competition, and to push myself when it would have been perfectly acceptable to ease off."
BY NANCY GONDO