26 Facts About Bob Mathias

Robert Bruce Mathias was an American decathlete, politician, and actor.

Bob Mathias was born in Tulare, California, to a family with partial Greek lineage.

Bob Mathias attended Tulare Union High School, where he was a classmate and long time friend of Sim Iness, the 1952 Olympic discus gold medalist.

Bob Mathias was unaware of the rules in the shot put and nearly fouled out of the event.

Bob Mathias almost failed in the high jump but was able to recover.

Bob Mathias overcame his difficulties and with superior pole vault and javelin scores was able to push past Ignace Heinrich to win the Olympic gold medal.

Bob Mathias continued to succeed in decathlons in the four years between the London games and the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.

In 1948, Mathias won the James E Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete, but because his scholastic record in high school did not match his athletic achievement, he spent a year at The Kiski School, a well-respected all-boys boarding school in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania.

Bob Mathias then entered Stanford University in 1949, played college football for two years and was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.

Bob Mathias set his first decathlon world record in 1950 and led Stanford to a Rose Bowl appearance in 1952, the first nationally televised college football game.

Bob Mathias was promoted to the rank of captain and was honorably discharged.

At Helsinki in 1952, Bob Mathias established himself as one of the world's greatest all-around athletes.

Bob Mathias won the decathlon by the astounding margin of 912 points, which established a new world record, and he became the first person to successfully defend an Olympic decathlon title.

Bob Mathias returned to the United States as a national hero.

Bob Mathias later became the first director of the United States Olympic Training Center, a post he held from 1977 to 1983.

Bob Mathias starred in a number of mostly cameo-type roles in a variety of movies and TV shows throughout the 1950s.

Between 1967 and 1975, Bob Mathias served four terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican, representing the northern San Joaquin Valley of California.

Bob Mathias was re-elected three times without serious difficulty, but in 1974, his Congressional district was significantly redrawn in a mid-decade state redistricting plan.

Renumbered as the 17th, Bob Mathias's district acquired a large section of Fresno while losing several rural areas.

Bob Mathias was narrowly defeated for re-election by John Hans Krebs, a member of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.

Bob Mathias was one of several Republicans swept out of office in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

From June to August 1975, Bob Mathias served as the deputy director of the Selective Service.

Bob Mathias was a regional director in the unsuccessful 1976 presidential election campaign of Gerald Ford.

Bob Mathias was diagnosed with cancer in 1996, and died from it in Fresno, California on September 2,2006, at age 75.

Bob Mathias is interred at Tulare Cemetery in Tulare, California.

Bob Mathias was survived by wife Gwen, daughters Romel, Megan, Marissa, stepdaughter Alyse Alexander, son Reiner, brothers Eugene and Jim, and sister Patricia Guerrero.