Word: rafe
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...Rafe was grimly confident that he could hold the slim lead he had built, despite the fact that on past performance Kuznetsov was favored in three of the final five events. "I'm gonna win," Rafe insisted...
Johnson increased his margin with a second in the hurdles, as Kuznetsov finished third. He won the discus, lost some ground when Kuznetsov edged him for second in the pole vault. Then Rafe uncorked a prodigious heave of 238 ft. 1⅞ in. for an easy triumph in the javelin, to sew it up. His winning margin was better than 400 points...
Back home in Kingsburg (pop. 23,000), Rafe's parents smiled happily when the local radio station interrupted a music program to announce his victory. But none of the town's inhabitants were very surprised. To the home-town folks, Johnson is a Samson, Paul Bunyan and Frank Merriwell rolled into one. His smoothly muscled build (6 ft. 3 in., 200 Ibs.) casts him in the mold of Jim Thorpe and Bob Mathias, great Olympic decathlon champions of the past. In high school he captained the track, basketball and football teams, is still remembered as a good infielder...
Good As Any. But Rafe did not take the decathlon seriously until 1952, when he went to nearby Tulare, Calif, to see Mathias win the Olympic decathlon trials, decided he was as good as or better than most of the contestants...
Entering U.C.L.A. in 1954, Johnson worked hard for Track Coach "Ducky" Drake, and improved quickly. "Johnson picks up things faster and better than most athletes," says Drake. "You tell him what to do and he can do it immediately." Rafe made the Olympic team in 1956, managed to finish second to Indiana...