From the archives of J. B. Cash's column:
WORLD'S GREATEST ATHLETES
(8/15/04) At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, King Gustav V of Sweden proclaimed to the decathlon winner, an American of Irish descent, Jim Thorpe: "You sir, are the world's greatest athlete."
Since then the Olympic decathlon champion has been dubbed "the World's Greatest Athlete." The title is properly given since the decathlon is the only objective test of all around athletic ability. Decathletes must contest ten separate events and have those performances tallied on a standard scoring table. The decathlon measures basic sporting ability like jumping, sprinting and throwing. It is a test of a complete range of physical skills, not just one single skill. The event has been dominated by great white athletes like Bob Mathias and Bruce Jenner. The history of decathlon winners have been a showcase for white athletic prowess and ownership of the title "World's Greatest Athlete."
The history of the decathlon began 26 centuries ago when the Greeks created an all-around test, the pentathlon, for the ancient Olympic Games. The ancient pentathlon consisted of a long jump, discus throw, javelin throw, a sprint and ended with a wrestling match. The Greeks invented the pentathlon to ascertain their best all around athletes.
While most of the rest of the world was crawling around in mud huts and caves, the Greeks introduced the pentathlon at Olympia in 708 BC and continued unabated every fourth year for almost eleven centuries. The first Olympic winner was Lampis, a young Spartan. And we know that Gorgos, of the small town of Elis (near Olympia), won four ancient pentathlons. The pentathlon was not just an Olympic event. By the 6th century BC major religious games were held in Corinth, Delphi and Nemea. And secondary athletic festivals were conducted in most towns of the Greek world. Athletes could and did compete in numerous pentathlons annually.
The popularity of the pentathlon varied over time and from person to person. Some, like Aristotle, had lofty respect for the pentathlete's combination of speed and strength. Others, like wrestler Plato (his name means broad shouldered), considered the pentathlete a mediocre performer. The last recorded ancient Olympic pentathlon winner was Publius Asklepiades of Corinth who won in AD 241. In A.D. 393 Roman Emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, closed all pagan sanctuaries, including Olympia, effectively ending the ancient Olympic Games. The site was abandoned and over the centuries, buried by nature and earthquakes. In the 19th century German archaeological teams excavated the ancient Olympic site. Soon thereafter the Greeks and the Baron Pierre de Coubertin promoted a revival of the Olympic Games.
Many of the ideals of higher civilization faded as Greece and Rome declined. But the ideal of a versatile, all-around athlete was never lost amongst European people who have always sought to better themselves through athletic achievement. Other areas of Europe had their own contests. During the Viking era (approximately A.D. 800-1250) Norsemen had to pass a number of athletic tests, mostly military in nature. Contests for Vikings included running, wrestling, throwing heavy spears and even dashing over moving oars.
During the Middle Ages, knights periodically tested their skills in tournaments, many of which used a point scoring system. Aspirants had to pass multi-event tests before knighthood. Knights were asked to excel in numerous physical and martial skills. Treatises on educational reform in the middle of the sixteenth century called for youths to know how to ride in armor, vault on horseback, practice weightlifting, run, wrestle and jump for distance and height. By the early seventeenth century Robert Dover, an aristocratic English lawyer, reinstated the Olympic Games. These annual affairs, The Olympik Games of the Cotswolds, began in 1612 and lasted more than two centuries. Thousands, including William Shakespeare, came to watch the Cotswold Olympiks which proved very popular.
The Renaissance and the Enlightenment Era began the age where Western culture would be dominant. Advances in technology and economics provided Europeans with free time. In the mid 1700s, in Dessau, in what is today Germany, students competed in a school pentathlon, a combination of the ancient Greek version and knighthood skills. And, in 1792 in Stockholm, Sweden, an 'overall' champion was crowned using a three-event contest (running, throwing a large stone, swimming).
All-around competitions were held in Ireland in the middle of the 19th century. Another English Olympic revival, the Much Wenlock Games, offered a pentathlon in 1851, the events being a high jump, long jump, putting a 36 pound stone, half mile run and climbing a 55-foot rope.
Large numbers of Scots, Irish and Germans immigrated to America during the 19th century and they brought their games with them. The Scottish Caledonian Games, German Turners and US colleges fostered the return of track and field, which became popular after the Civil War. Many American meets had an "all-around winner," usually the athlete winning the most events or places. The concept was formalized in 1884 when the US designed a national championship All-Around. This evolved into ten events (100 yards, shot put, high jump, 880 yard walk, hammer throw, pole vault, 120 yard hurdles, 56 lb. weight throw, long jump and one mile run) contested in a single day, with only 5 minutes rest between events.
In 1880 an all-around championship was held at the German Gymnastics Championships. It included a stone throw, pole vault and long jump. By the 1890s several Scandinavian nations were offering a pentathlon, exactly the same as the ancient Greek event.
In 1904, the AAU held their All-Around championships in conjunction with the Olympic Games of St. Louis. Tom Kiely, an Irishman, won easily, becoming the first Olympic multi-event track champion in 16 centuries. At the 1912 Olympic Games of Stockholm the Swedish organizers planned a "modern" pentathlon (based on military events), a track and field pentathlon (based on the ancient variety, substituting the 1500 meter run for wrestling) and a decathlon, a ten-event contest.
The Scandinavians took to the decathlon like fish to water. In fact, all but one Olympic decathlon medal awarded before World War II were won by decathletes from either the United States or a Scandinavian nation. American achievements were chiefly a result of talented ex-collegians from America's heartland taking up the event once every four years. Scandinavian success was evidence of a multifaceted view of physical education.
In 1920 Norwegian soldier Helge Lövland edged Brutus Hamilton of the University of Missouri by smallest margin, before or since, in Olympic decathlon history. Four years later in 1924, in 113- degree heat on Paris's 500 meter track, Harold Osborn, a former student at the University of Illinois, won the gold medal just days after he also won the Olympic high jump title. He remains the only athlete to have won both the decathlon and an individual event.
In 1928 in Amsterdam, a pair of Finns, Paavo Yröjla and Akilles Järvinen, captured the gold and silver medals. Ken Doherty of Detroit, Michigan won the bronze. A University of Kansas football and basketball star, "Jarring" Jim Bausch, turned back Järvinen at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1932. Bausch is still regarded as the greatest athlete in the history of the University of Kansas, quite a feather when one realizes that four-time Olympic discus winner Al Oerter, Olympic 10k champ Billy Mills and hoop star Wilt Chamberlain were all Jayhawks.
Germans expected their world record holder, Hans-Heinrich Sievert, to win the Olympic gold medal in Berlin in 1936. But the United States came up with a used car salesman from Denver named Glenn Morris, a former student at Colorado State who took up the decathlon in 1936 and broke Sievert's record in just his second meet. Morris re-broke his own world record and led a 1-2-3 USA sweep, all of which was brilliantly captured by Leni Riefenstahl superb film, Olympiad, Festival of Nations.
In 1948, when the Olympic Games were held in London, a 17-year old schoolboy from California turned all the decathlon traditions upside down. The decathlon had been looked upon as an event for the experienced, older athlete. Yet here was Bob Mathias, during two miserable days of London fog, turning back the world's best. He was, and still is, the youngest track and field champion in Olympic history. And it was only his third decathlon. In the intervening years, Mathias enrolled at Stanford, starred as a running back and broke and re-broke the decathlon world record.
At the 1952 Helsinki Games Mathias became the first decathlete to win a pair of Olympic titles. He led another 1-2-3 USA sweep and won by more than 900 points, the largest margin in Olympic history. Although just 21, Bob retired, undefeated and four-time national champion. He starred in a movie version of his life, The Bob Mathias Story, then served several terms in Congress and was director of the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
West German coach Friedel Schirmer, who had finished eighth at the 1952 Helsinki decathlon, raised his nation's awareness and popularity of the decathlon. In 1964 in Tokyo, the American decathlon winning streak, which began in 1932, ended. Germans Willy Holdorf and Hans-Joachim Walde won the gold and bronze, sandwiching Estonian Rein Aun.
Four years later Schirmer's athletes claimed all the Olympic medals. American Bill Toomey, a Santa Barbara English teacher, had trained with Schirmer in West Germany for a year. Toomey, Walde and his world-record holder teammate Kurt Bendlin went 1-2-3 at the Mexico City Games of 1968.
Eastern European nations, especially the Soviet Union, Poland and East Germany, began to emphasize and promote the decathlon in the early 1970s. At the 1972 Munich Games a Soviet, the lanky Nikolay Avilov became both Olympic champion and world record holder. Another Soviet, soldier Leonid Litvenyenko, and Ryszard Katus of Poland, won the remaining medals.
Bruce Jenner had set two world decathlon records in the months before the Olympic Games of 1976 and Montreal was to be a showdown with the defending champion, Avilov. From the opening gun it was obvious that Jenner was on a roll and after the first day, he was just a few points behind German Guido Kratschmer and Avilov. With his best events on the second day, Jenner steamrolled the field winning Olympic gold.
At the Seoul Olympic Games of 1988, a 6 foot-6 inch East German medical student, Christian Schenk, used a 7-5 1/2" high jump to propel him to the gold medal. East Germany's Torsten Voss, a 24-year old mechanic was second and Canadian Dave Steen, a Cal-Berkeley student, for the bronze medal. In 1992 shoe giant Reebok signed both Dan O'Brien and Dave Johnson in a multi-million dollar advertising campaign entitled, "Dan or Dave? To Be Settled in Barcelona."
The campaign raised decathlon popularity in the Unites States but neither O'Brien nor Johnson was fortunate enough to win at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. O'Brien, suffering a stress fracture, was unable to clear a pole vault bar at the U.S. Olympic Trials and did not make the American team. Johnson won the Trials but suffered a broken bone in his foot just weeks before the games. He kept the injury secret, competed with a heart of gold and limped home with the bronze medal. Czechoslovakia's Robert Zmelik won in Barcelona and Spain's Antonio Penalver was second.
In 1996 Dan O'Brien reigned supreme winning the Olympic Gold. Frank Busemann, a 22 year old German, was a surprising second and Czech soldier Tomas Dvorak edged American Steve Fritz for the bronze medal. In the 2000 Sydney games Erki Nool, from the new country of Estonia won the gold and Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic won silver.
A US athlete named Tom Pappas, who is of Greek heritage and has a large Greek fan base, is the gold-medal favorite in the decathlon for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. But one thing is for sure, the top winners of the event that carries the title "World's Greatest Athlete" will all be descendants of the people that make the best all around athletes: Europeans. At Caste Football we salute and cheer these "World's Greatest Athletes"
