Bob Mathias

Bob Mathias 1953

athletics
gold	1948	Decathlon
gold	1952	Decathlon

Robert Bruce "Bob" Mathias (born November 19, 1930 in Tulare , California , † September 2, 2006 in Fresno , California) was an American athlete and politician . He was internationally successful in the decathlon from 1948 to 1952 . Mathias won the Olympic gold medal in the decathlon twice in a row , became the youngest athletics Olympic champion at the age of 17 and remained so until Maureen Caird's success at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico .

Career

Mathias started the decathlon in 1948 on the advice of the coach of the high school in Tulare and qualified straight away for the XI. 1948 London Olympic Games . Although his complete inexperience and, above all, his ignorance of the rules were almost doomed, he won with 165 points ahead of the runner-up. In the same year he was awarded the James E. Sullivan Award .

In order to have better training opportunities, he then moved to the Kiski School in Saltsburg for a year . From 1949 he attended Stanford University , where he took part in the 1952 Rose Bowl Games in Pasadena as team leader of the football team . In the same year he succeeded as the first decathlon Olympic champion in history a repetition of his success: At the XII. He won the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki by more than 900 points. He then retired from athletics, but was honored with the Associated Press Sportsman of the Year award that same year .

In later years he appeared as an actor in a film adaptation of his youth. The film was titled The Bob Mathias Story . Several other films followed. From 1967 to 1975 he represented California's 18th Congressional electoral district in the US House of Representatives as a Republican . 1974 failed his re-election attempt on the Democrat John Hans Krebs .

In 2014 he was inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame .

Services

• Olympic games
  • 1948 Olympic Games in London :

    Gold with 7139 pts. Ahead of the French Ignace Heinrich with 6974 pts. And his compatriot Floyd Simmons with 6950 pts.

  • 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki :

    Gold with 7887 points ahead of his two compatriots Milt Campbell with 6975 points and Floyd Simmons with 6788 points.

• AAU championships

year	1948	1949	1950	1952
Points	7224	7556	8042	7825

• World records
  • 8042 points, scored June 30, 1950 in Tulare . This made Bob Mathias the first decathlete to exceed the 8000 point limit.
  • 7887 points (new rating), achieved on July 26th at the XII. 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki . This achievement was only surpassed by Rafer Johnson three years later .

Filmography (selection)

• 1960: Theseus, hero of Hellas (Teseo contro il Minotauro)

Web links

• Bob Mathias in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Bob Mathias in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Bob Mathias in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)