Bob Mathias
Trending
American decathlete Robert ‘Bob’ Mathias was a gifted track-and-field athlete in high school, qualifying for the Olympics in his senior year. He was on the team that went to the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London – but he went to the games with not much awareness of the Decathlon, its rules and regulations, or the conditions he had to follow.
That lack of awareness almost cost Mathias his participation. Taking part in the shot put, he was unaware of the rules and found himself on the verge of disqualification. After this, he also almost crashed out of the high jump event, but managed to recover from that as well.
Mathias would eventually go on to win the Olympic gold medal that year, and at 17 then became the youngest ever athlete to win gold at an Olympic track-and-field event. In between the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, Mathias pursued a college degree, then went on to win gold yet again in the same event at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.
He had an active political career in California after retiring from athletics, and eventually lost his battle to cancer in 2006.
