1948 LONDON OLYMPICS ' DECATHLON'

AMERICAN BOB MATHIAS WINS GOLD!

Day 8 of the 1948 London Olympics has gone down in Olympic history as one of the most extraordinary days.

The weather was appalling,an absurdly late finish for the age under the light of arc lamps.

The couple of hundred die-hard spectators who stayed until 10.30pm at Wembley saw Bob Mathias, a 17 year old from California,take second place in the decathalon 1,500m and win the gold medal.

Just two weeks previously he had been a high school student who had never taken part in a full scale decathlon and he also had to battle anaemia.

Mathias obviously had a great talent that could do with some , well lots of fine tuning, he had nearly failed in the shot put because he did not know the rules and almost failed the high jump too. This was the second day of the two day decathlon competition that lasted 12 hours, this prompted farcical scenes as the skies grew even darker. Before the javelin, the penultimate event, cars were driven into Wembley stadium and their headlights turned on to illuminate the foul line.

After the1,500m, Mathias all but collapsed but had still done enough to become the youngest Olympics track and field winner. Asked how he plannened to celebrate he replied: "I'll start shaving, I guess." The next day he had to be woken because he nearly slept through the victory celebrations.

Mathias defended his title in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and retired from sport.
He had a brief acting career in the late 50s. In the mid 60s he moved in to politics as a Republican in California, in 1975 Mathias was apparently swept aside in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Mathias was diagnosed with cancer in 1995 and passed away in 1996 aged 75.