Mathias: Where Have All The Amateurs Gone? 2-Time Gold Medalist Dislikes Pro Presence In Olympics

Bob Mathias won two gold medals in the decathlon in the Dark Ages - so long ago that only amateurs went to the Olympics.

He won his first Olympic title at age 17, just two months out of high school, in 1948 at London, then repeated four years later at Helsinki.

So after graduating in 1954 from Stanford University, where he played football for two years, and after serving some in the Marines, Mathias wanted to try out for the 1956 Olympics at Melbourne.

“I wrote a letter to Dan Ferris, head of the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) telling him I’d like to try out,” recalled Mathias, who, after his second gold medal, made a movie, “The Bob Mathias Story,” and had done some endorsements.

“I wanted to know how to restore my amateur standing,” Mathias said. “He said what I had to do was give all the money I’d made back to the AAU.”

Wow! Have things changed. Now the Olympics seem to have almost reached the point where athletes will get paid to compete.

“I really do object to the entry of professional athletes into the Olympics,” said Mathias, who did not compete in Melbourne.

There are still some amateurs in the Olympics, but it has reached the point where they are few and far between.

“I just don’t know where they (the Olympics) are going,” said Mathias, in New York for the Jesse Owens International Trophy Award dinner last Wednesday night at which 40 members of the 1948 U.S. Olympic team were honored. The Owens trophy was presented to Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, who set world records last year in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters outdoors and the 5,000 indoors.

“Athletes get better every four years,” said Mathias, who, since his two gold medals, has attended every Olympics except the 1980 Games at Moscow.

Athletes have gotten generally bigger and faster, training methods and coaching have improved and so has equipment since Mathias competed, but his story still is one of the best in Olympic history.

Mathias was two-time Olympic champion in perhaps the most grueling athletic event there is; starting fullback for Stanford in 1951-52, played in the 1952 Rose Bowl; actor in four movies and the 1960 television series, “The Trouble Shooters;” and U.S. representative from California for four terms in 1967-75.

It is, of course, track and field and the Olympics that are at the heart of the Mathias story.

In high school at Tulare, Calif., Mathias competed in from four to six events in every meet - high and low hurdles, shut put, discus, long jump and high jump.

“About three months before the 1948 Olympics, my coach, Virgil Jackson, heard about a decathlon meet in Los Angeles. He didn’t know all the events involved, but he said he would find out and would I like to try,” Mathias said.

“I said ‘sure,’ since I’d never been in the Los Angeles Coliseum. I won and I thought that was it.”

Then Jackson discovered the national decathlon championship, which served as the Olympic trial, was about to be held in Bloomfield, N.J.

“I can’t afford to go back there,” Mathias told him. The local Elks Club, however, came through with the money, and Mathias was on his way to track-and-field glory, following his 1948 gold medal with a world decathlon-record performance in the 1952 games.