Sport: To Do a Little Better

(See Cover)

All roads led to Rome. Day after day, the swarm of tourists dumfounded whitecoated policemen with questions in a dozen languages. In the Olympic Village, the world’s finest athletes relaxed in new dormitories that even provided outsize beds (called “De Gaulles”) for the long-legged likes of U.S. basketball players. Through the streets roamed husky, black-jacketed South Africans, slim Burmese in sandals and red sweat suits, and Russians handing out bronze pins engraved with space Luniks. Long after midnight, officials found a Liberian marathoner, stop watch in hand, patiently plodding mile after mile. “It’s quiet now,” he explained, “and cool.” In their practice sessions, tough Pakistanis played the American schoolgirl sport of field hockey with startling violence, Hungarians struck sparks with their shining sabers, bull-necked Turkish and Iranian wrestlers charged and grunted like affronted rhinos.

All this was prelude to the moment this week when Rome sends 6,200 bewildered pigeons fluttering into the sky, touches a flame to the traditional torch and opens the 1960 Olympic Games. By any standard, the games look to be the greatest in history. To see a record number of 7,000 athletes from a record number of 85 countries, spectators spent a record $3,200,000 for tickets before the first event was held. Among the athletes were scores of strong-willed and strong-muscled individualists, men and women with the zeal to toil through tedious years of training and the control to reach their peak in the brief, intense flurry of com petition. Even in such a high-caliber group, a dignified U.S. Negro named Rafer Johnson stood out.

By character as well as by prowess, Rafer Johnson, 25, comes close indeed to fulfilling the ancient Olympic ideals of the dedicated, all-around athlete. His event is the ten-part (see cuts) decathlon—a whole track meet in miniature—which combines the classic demands of speed, stamina, strength and spirit. At 6 ft. 3 in., 196 Ibs., Johnson seems to have been molded especially for the decathlon. He has the slim, knobby-kneed legs of a sprinter. But above his trim, 35-in. waist, he is built like a weight man, with a torso that mushrooms to a 46-in. chest, and shoulders that are thick with slabs of muscle.

“He Is Gentle.” Even more important, Johnson has shown a monastic dedication to sport that would please the most spiritual of Olympic enthusiasts. He has shrugged off crippling injuries. In competition he has cheered on his most dangerous opponents. Says the Rev. Louis Evans, pastor of Los Angeles’ Bel Air Presbyterian Church: “This is a most remark able human being. He is as gentle as a child, and yet he is tremendously competitive.”

This summer Johnson scored 8,683 points* in the decathlon to break by 326 points the world record of Russia’s Vasily Kuznetsov, 28. In the eyes of many coaches of many sports, this qualifies Johnson as the finest athlete in the world. Johnson remains unsatisfied. “Rafer has always seen his objectives with almost frightening clarity.” says a friend. The present objective—amounting almost to an obsession—of Decathlon Star Rafer Johnson is to win a gold medal in Rome.

“He’s a Gentleman.” Rafer Johnson’s struggle to win a gold medal in the two-day event next week in many ways reflects the keenness of competition-at the 1960 Olympics. It is the challenge of his career. He knows his top foes all too well. One of them, Formosa’s Yang Chuan-kwang, 27, is a fellow student at U.C.L A., has shared Johnson’s workouts for the past two years. Lean and limber as bamboo, Yang is improving with impressive speed. And Johnson’s duel with Russia’s Kuznetsov dates back to the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, when Johnson finished second and Kuznetsov third to New Jersey’s Milt Campbell. In 1958, Johnson defeated Kuznetsov in Moscow in the dramatic U.S.-U.S.S.R. track meet. Twice.

Kuznetsov has taken away Johnson’s world record; twice, Johnson has won it back. Says Johnson: “I know Kuznetsov well enough to know three things about him. He’s a fine athlete. He’s a gentleman. And he’s a competitor.”

Man to Man. The competition between Johnson, Kuznetsov and Yang will be just one of the dozens of clashes that will de cide the unofficial team title in Rome.

Russia, the winner in 1956, is favored again largely because of strength in such sports as weight lifting and women’s track, plus a crack gymnastic team that will pick up a dozen or so gold medals, offsetting U.S. superiority in men’s track. Inevitably, the scoring of the Olympics by newsmen and public as a testing of national prestige will be decried by officials. The rule book plainly states: “The Olympics are a contest between individuals.” Says Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee: “When the gun is fired, each man knows he’s on his own. The whole principle of the Olympics is man-to-man competition.”

Man-to-man competition, most evident in the decathlon, is present throughout the Olympics. In each event, the Olympic idea and ideals are the same. Among the best athletes who will, like Johnson, be on their own when the gun fires: In the 1,500 meters—the prestige race of the Olympics—Australia’s Herb Elliott, 22, will take on the world, including Ireland’s Ron Delany, winner of the gold medal in 1956, and the U.S.’s fast-improving Dyrol Burleson. World record holder in the 1,500 meters (3:36) and in the mile (3:54.5), Elliott has been hampered by a bad left foot this year, and some critics claim that he is not the run ner he was since getting married in May 1959. But Elliott has recently been training as of old, loping up sand dunes to strengthen his legs for what should be the finest race of the Olympics. Insists his coach, goateed Percy Cerutty: “Herb Elliott is more mature, faster, stronger and dedicated. He’s faster right now than he ever was.”

¶In the 100-and 200-meter dashes, California’s rangy Ray Norton, 22, will face half a dozen international stars who will need only the slightest break to beat him to the gold medals. Norton is the favorite because of his consistency under pressure and a smooth, driving stride that picks up speed as the race goes on. The long shot: West Germany’s Armin Hary, 23, a Frankfurt department store clerk, who gets off the mark fast, ran the 100 meters in a world record time of 10 sec. Hary suffers from brittle nerves, and in preparation for the stress of Rome has been taking long walks in the country. In the end, Norton’s chief threats will probably be his American teammates, such as Dave Sime, 24, in the 100, and Stone Johnson, 20, in the 200.

¶In the shotput, the U.S. whales will wage a private war that will likely produce the most fascinating field event on the program. Back for a try at his third gold medal is California’s Parry O’Brien, patriarch of the herd at 28. whose best effort this year (63 ft. 5 in.) nonetheless stands a poor third to that of Arizona’s 20-year-old Dallas Long (64 ft. 6½ in.) and Kansas’ Bill Nieder, 26. the world record holder (65 ft. 10 in.). As the equalizer. O’Brien counts on his imposing reputation to demoralize his teammates, but Army Lieut. Nieder. who dislikes the hulking sight of his rival, says disdainfully: “O’Brien can’t ‘psych’ me out.” Top foreign challenger is Britain’s Arthur Rowe, a blacksmith who shows off to fans by licking a red-hot bar, practices behind a neighborhood pub, and despite a commendable toss of 62 ft. 1 in., is expected to be completely psyched by the Americans in Rome.

¶In the jumping events, three U.S. world record holders are expected to land on the winner’s stand. High Jumper John Thomas, 19, lectures himself before each attempt (“Now, John, don’t duck your head into the bar”), takes his own advice so well that no one thinks his best jump of 7 ft. 3¼ in. is his peak. Pole Vaulter Don (“Tarzan”) Bragg, 25, has hauled his fullback’s body (6 ft. 3 in., 197 lbs.) up 15 ft. 9¼ in. Broad Jumper Ralph Boston, 21, holds the unofficial world record of 26 ft. 11½ in., will likely get his strongest competition from Germany’s Dr. Manfred Steinbach, 27, whose best jump of 26 ft. 8½ in. was disqualified because of a tailwind.

¶In women’s track, Tennessee State’s Wilma Rudolph is the star of a U.S. team that is determined to score some surprises against the strong Australians and Russians. The 17th child in a family of 19. Wilma had rheumatic fever as an infant, did not walk until she was seven, and then wore braces for a couple of years. Star pupil of Shotputter O’Brien is Earlene Brown, a 25-year-old Los Angeles housewife, who is now up to a hefty throwing weight of 225 lbs. for the shot and the discus, after slimming down to 194 lbs. to have a baby.

¶In men’s swimming, Australia’s barrel-chested John Konrads, 18, will be the man to beat in the 400 and 1,500 meters. The greatest swimmer in history, Konrads drives himself six miles a day in training, gulps as many as 18 vitamin pills before a race, treats distance events as sprints and holds seven world records. But Konrads may have to swim faster than ever before to beat Teammate Murray Rose, 21, winner of both the 400 and 1,500 meters at Melbourne’s 1956 Olympics, and Japan’s stocky Tsuyoshi Yamanalca, 21, who has smoothed out his rough arm stroke. In the 200-meter butterfly, Indiana’s bull-shouldered Mike Troy, 19, will be the surest gold-medal swimming prospect for the U.S. The world record holder (2:13.2). Troy fattens up on milkshakes and slims down with as many as three workouts a day.

¶In women’s swimming. California’s 16-year-old Chris von Saltza will be the favorite in the 400 meters, the top race for the girls. Holder of the world record (4:44.5 ), Chris is the long and leggy (5 ft. 10 in., 140 lbs.) blonde leader of a strong U.S. team. Chris planes high and flat in the water like a surfboard, has a sea lion’s endurance—and a teen-ager’s superstition about a good-luck plastic frog, which she solemnly stations by her starting block before a race. Her challengers: Australia’s Dawn Fraser, 22, an octogenarian by swimming standards, and the slumping, doubt-ridden Ilsa Konrads, the 16-year-old kid sister of John. World Record Holder Fraser will be the favorite in the 100 meters (her main threat: Chris von Saltza), and a dark horse in the 100-meter butterfly, thereby stands an outside chance of winning three gold medals on her own, plus a fourth for the 400-meter freestyle relay.

A Champion Apart. With so extraordinary an assemblage of great athletes concentrated in Rome, why do so many Olympic performers and coaches look upon Rafer Johnson as a champion apart? The answer lies deeper than a lifetime of phenomenal athletic performance. For the spirit of the Olympic games is more than the will to win: it is the quality of competing with honor, courage and character. Says Calvin Johnson (no kin), a longtime friend of Johnson’s and a doctor now in training to be a medical missionary: “I’ve never met anyone like him, in medicine, the clergy, wherever. He has a profound respect for other people, and a profound humbleness.”

Rafer Johnson was born to Elma and Lewis Johnson in a town named Hillsboro, south of Dallas. He was just 18 months old when his family moved to an all-Negro district of Dallas. There Rafer spent his early years in a bitter little world of segregation, discrimination and poverty. “I don’t care if I never see Texas again.” Johnson says, with a rare flash of anger. “There’s nothing about it I like. If my family had stayed in Texas. I not only wouldn’t be representing the U.S. in the Olympic Games—I wouldn’t even have gone to college.”

In 1945 Lewis Johnson moved his growing family of three boys and two girls to California, where he caught on as a section hand for the Southern Pacific. The family ended up in the quiet town of Kingsburg (pop. 1,500), 20 miles south of Fresno in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. For a year, with nothing but a ragged curtain as a dividing “wall,” the seven Johnsons made their home in a boxcar on a siding near a cannery.

In time they were befriended by Edward Fishel, owner of a small animal-feed processing plant, who hired Rafer’s father as a handyman, his mother as a domestic, moved the family out of the boxcar and into a small house. Things went fine until the town’s police chief told the Fishels to fire the Johnsons, then threatened Mrs. Johnson herself: “I don’t want to see the sun set on any niggers in this town.” The Fishels stood their ground, the Johnsons ignored the threats, and nothing further happened. The police chief later left the job.

“A Decathlon Man.” There never was any doubt that Rafer would be an athlete. “First thing I remember about Rafer,” says Benton Bowen, co-publisher of the weekly Kingsburg Recorder, “was that my daughter came telling that the principal had asked the new boy to stop hitting the baseball so hard—he was breaking all the bats.”

As a high school athlete, Johnson became a legend. In football, he led Kingsburg to three league championships, as a granitic. 195-lb. left halfback averaged over 9 yds. per carry. In basketball, he averaged 17 points a game. In baseball, he hit over .400. But track was his sport—anything in track. In Johnson’s junior year, Track Coach Murl Dodson drove him the 24 miles down to Tulare to watch Local Hero Bob Mathias compete in the event he had won as a 17-year-old in the 1948 Olympics in London and at Helsinki in 1952: the decathlon. “On the way back,” says Johnson, “it struck me. I could have beaten most of the guys in that meet. That’s when I decided to be a decathlon man.” Only four weeks later, Johnson won California’s Junior A.A.U. Decathlon Championship. In his senior year, Johnson won it again, then went off to the National A.A.U. Championship in Atlantic City. Competing against the biggest names in U.S. track, he finished a respectable third. That should have been enough to please an 18-year-old, but it did not satisfy Rafer Johnson. He hadn’t won.

Triumph & Defeat. At least two dozen colleges bid for Johnson. He chose U.C.L.A. “because there was something about the atmosphere I liked.” To concentrate on the decathlon. Johnson passed up college football, much to the frustration of the late coach Red Sanders, who saw in Johnson a future brilliant tailback in U.C.L.A.’s single-wing formation. Freshman Johnson improved fast enough in the decathlon to win the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City, celebrated by scoring 7.985 points at a welcome-home meet in Kingsburg—thereby breaking Mathias’ world record by 98 points.

In 1956. Johnson won his first national championship and became the favorite to win the Olympics that November in Melbourne. Then his battered left knee, in jured in high school football, began to swell. Just before the games Johnson tore a stomach muscle. It was painful even to walk, worse to run. Each jump ripped the muscle more. Johnson’s two agonizing days came to a climax in the final event, the 1,500 meters. To finish second behind Milt Campbell and to stave off Kuznetsov, Johnson needed to run the best 1,500 of his career. He did. “Sure it hurt,” says Johnson, “but what was I going to do? Quit? I was representing the U.S. I had to break five minutes. I could feel the Russian breathing down my neck all the way.”

The Russian was still breathing down Johnson’s neck in 1958 during the U.S.-U.S.S.R. track meet in Moscow. Weeks before, Kuznetsov had set a world rec ord of 8,014 points. In one of the memorable duels in sports history. Johnson defeated Kuznetsov 8,302 v. 7,897 to regain the world record—and find himself a hero to the Russians. Johnson was kissed on the cheek by Kuznetsov, a bouquet of flowers was pressed into his huge hand, and a band of jubilant Russians later tossed him into the air in triumph. “I’d gone over there thinking we’d be abused one way or the other,” says Johnson. “But they cheered the performance, not the man or the nationality.” On the strength of his showing in Moscow, Rafer Johnson was named Sportsman of the Year by SPORTS ILLUSTRATED.

“Natural Leadership.” Unlike many another star athlete, Johnson did not use his college as a mere mail drop and a spot to hang his spikes. At U.C.L.A., Johnson’s record of campus leadership was fully as impressive as his sports achievements. He sparked the basketball team with his clutch play and rebounding. A hard worker if not a great scholar, he kept his grades at a B-minus average, switching from pre-dentistry to physical education as a junior. He was the first Negro to be pledged to the predominantly Jewish fraternity of Pi Lambda Phi. A devoutly religious member of the Swedish Mission Covenant church, he spoke constantly before church groups, was a leader of “Youth for Christ.” a nondenominational national campus movement.

In his senior year, Johnson was elected student body president. On the job, Johnson worked so late that he kept waking up at his study desk at daybreak. In June 1959, shortly before graduation. Johnson climbed into the rear seat of a car driven by his brother Jim, dangled his long legs over the back of the front seat and dozed off. He was completely relaxed when a car coming from the opposite direction swerved across the road and hit the Johnson car head on. The impact jackknifed Johnson. Only his fit condition and strong body saved his back from a serious injury that would have ended all decathlon competition then and there. As it was, he suffered a severe muscular strain around the lower spine that knocked him out of another duel with Kuznetsov at the U.S.-U.S.S.R. track meet in Philadelphia in July.

Not until February of this year was Rafer Johnson able to try any real exercise. Then he spent two dreary months jogging or walking around the U.C.L.A. practice field, for up to six hours at a stretch. In April, under the anxious eye of U.C.L.A. Track Coach Ducky Drake, he tried sprint starts. But Johnson and his coach were most afraid of back-wrench ing jumps. At last, in late spring, Johnson took a deep breath and started down the pole-vault runway. He cleared the bar—and plummeted into the sawdust without a twinge. Johnson was back on the track.

Johnson launched his comeback at July’s National A.A.U. Championships, which also served as the Olympic trials. Though an injury as simple as a pulled muscle might have kept Johnson off the Olympic team altogether, he went all out for a special reason. Kuznetsov had captured his world record and pushed the score to 8,357 points. In the ninth event, Johnson raced smoothly across the grass and sent a silver javelin shimmering into the air. When it landed 233 ft. 3 in. away, Johnson knew he had already passed Kuznetsov’s world record. In pure delight, he began sprinting after his toss. Then he suddenly stopped and knelt to pray in the middle of the field, his face wet with tears. In the final event, the 1,500 meters, Johnson increased his world record to a final total of 8,683 points.

Even that score was far from safe that July day on the University of Oregon’s track field. Close behind Johnson was his old rival Yang. Though a Formosan. Yang was eligible for the A.A.U. meet, which accepts qualified foreigners. At this point, should he make a fast time in his heat of the 1,500 meters. Yang still had an outside chance of breaking Johnson’s newly set world record. When Yang began to falter. Johnson’s behavior was characteristic. From the sidelines he cried encouragement: “Keep going! Keep going! It’s almost over!” Lifted by Johnson’s cheers. Yang finished with the fine score of 8,426 points to pass Kuznetsov—but still short of Johnson’s record. That night Johnson sent a telegram home: “I did it with God’s help—a new world record.”

A Challenge. For the past six years Johnson’s life has been dominated by the decathlon. In recent months he lived for little else. Now a U.C.L.A. graduate student in physical education, Rafer Johnson shares an $83-a-month apartment with his brother Jim, a U.C.L.A. football player and a hurdler of near-Olympic caliber. Johnson has had no time for dates or vacations, and little relaxation beyond strumming a guitar. Every afternoon he got into his 1949 Chevrolet, a vehicle plainly showing its 150,000-mile past, and drove out to the U.C.L.A. field to practice.

There, day after day, Johnson and Yang held their own private meet. Formosa’s formidable Yang had been a promising baseball pitcher at home in 1954 when track coaches noticed his running speed and agility, talked him into trying the decathlon. To his astonishment, Yang won the Asian Games that year. In 1958 Yang came to the U.S. for a couple of months to pick up pointers, liked it so well that he learned to speak English and settled down as a physical education student at U.C.L.A. to work with Johnson. At 6 ft. 1 in., 180 lbs., Yang does not have the raw strength of Johnson, but surpasses him in the jumping events. The two are a taciturn pair; the only sounds of their pre-Rome workouts were the explosive “poofs” as they exhaled at the start of a sprint, or anguished grunts from the weight rings. Each day they methodically pushed themselves to the grey edge of exhaustion. Says Coach Drake: “When an athlete goes in for the decathlon seriously, it’s not just a matter of physical conditioning and training—it’s a whole way of life.”

In that sense, the decathlon poses an impossible challenge. No one man can ever hope to be the absolute best in all ten events. The lean sprinter will have trouble with the shot; the beefy weight man will lumber through the 100 meters. Worse yet, the events are cunningly alternated so that the competitor has no chance to use the same muscles and reflexes twice in succession. The cumulative effect is numbing. Because of his rare combination of speed and strength, Johnson is at his best in the 100 meters, 400 meters, the javelin, discus and shotput. But his weight is a handicap in the pole vault and high jump and, like every big man, he detests the 1,500-meter event that closes the two days of struggle. “The whole decathlon is ridiculous,” says Johnson, “but the 1,500 meters is insanity.” Why does he compete? Johnson gives the perfectionist’s answer: “Because every time I walk out there, I think maybe I’ll do a little better than the time before.”

Johnson Fan. That same answer might well have come from Russia’s Kuznetsov. At 6 ft. 1 in., 187 lbs., Kuznetsov, by profession a high school science teacher, has neither the size nor the natural talent of Johnson. To make the most of what he has, Kuznetsov has worked laboriously on his technique in each decathlon event since 1953, now exceeds Johnson in the pole vault and 1,500 meters, compares well with him in the broad jump, high jump and discus. Kuznetsov is proudly grooming his five-year-old son with the same thoroughness : “When we wake up in the morning, Vitya jumps on my bed and I hold him up balanced with one foot on my palm. He’s got a long way to go to be come an athlete, but now is the time to start training for the future.” Kuznetsov is a Johnson fan: “He is a very fine, tactful and modest young man.

I expect he will surpass his previous show ing. I am sure that when we meet again in Rome we shall be good friends.” Just Poof. Kuznetsov, Johnson, Yang and a husky long shot from Oregon named Dave Edstrom (best score: 8,176) will likely turn the decathlon competition in Rome into the tensest in history. “It’s only going to take one bad event to bump a guy right out of a gold medal,” says Coach Drake. “A bad start in the sprints, a puff of wind at the wrong time in the high jump or pole vault, a foul in the shotput or discus, a broken stride in the hurdles, and poof, it could be all over for one of these boys.” Under such pressure, Johnson’s greatest asset will be his bedrock of self-reliance, a quality that keeps him from having few really intimate friends, but allows him to work himself up to a cold competitive pitch ten times during the wearying grind of the decathlon. In Rome, Johnson will have an added incentive: he is quitting the decathlon after the Olympics. “I’ve had it,” says Johnson. “It’s time I started concentrating on a few other things.” Rafer Johnson would like eventually to travel abroad as a good-will representative for the U.S. State Department. “I know that sort of thing can do a lot to ease tensions,” says Johnson. “I like people. I want to do all I can to help them in whatever little way I can.” But first there is the matter at hand: a gold medal in Rome. Says Decathlon Star Rafer Johnson: “I am prepared to win — what ever that takes.”

* In the decathlon, each competitor’s performance in each of the ten events is measured against a formidable 78-page book of tables.