TAIPEI – Two sporting legends from opposite sides of the world. The fiercest rivals in the most demanding sporting event in the world, the decathlon – their duel at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome is still one of the most legendary moments in Olympic history. And – what many do not know – the best friends who train together under the same coach, help and encourage each other and jokingly call themselves “the two men of the United Nations”.
What a great story. What a potentially great documentary.
But it took me and my co-creator, the author and former Asian Wall Street Journal Reporter John Krich, more than 15 years to complete. Now, “Decathlon: The CK Yang and Rafer Johnson Story” is finally finished and streaming online.
What motivated us to continue?
I think it was mostly the power of this story of friendship and struggle, as well as the uniquely compelling personalities of the two main protagonists.
Yang Chuan-kwang was an Amis, one of Taiwan’s indigenous people. He grew up in poverty in the mountains of eastern Taiwan. But he was a remarkable athlete – so much so that when he tried out for the Taiwanese team at the 1954 Asian Games in Manila, he beat all of his teammates in almost every event, prompting his coaches to push him into the decathlon. Despite not knowing all the rules, he won gold in Manila and was called “the Iron Man of Asia.”
Rafer Johnson also grew up poor in Texas, the son of a sharecropper. As a teenager, his athletic abilities would have enabled him to play professional football or basketball, but he forwent these potentially lucrative career paths for the decathlon. While studying at UCLA, he set the world record in 1958 and was also one of the first African-Americans to be elected student body president. In fact, his athletic achievements made him a symbol of the achievements of black people in the early days of the US civil rights movement.
That same year, 1958, the Taiwanese government sent CK to train at UCLA with the goal of winning gold in Rome. Although Rafer had the same goal, he and CK became best friends, a sort of two-man support system: CK, moody and always up for a joke, Rafer, sincere and serious, both determined to win in Rome but each generous enough to help the other along the way.
Their duel, captured in our documentary, remains arguably the most thrilling and exciting decathlon in Olympic history. It came down to the last seconds of the last of the ten events. Rafer narrowly won gold. CK won silver, becoming the first person with a Chinese surname to ever win an Olympic medal. At the end of the competition, they fell into each other’s arms, a moment immortalized in one of the greatest photographs in sporting history.
But life after Rome was not easy for either man. Although CK set the world record in 1963 and was the clear favorite for the gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he was drugged by a teammate who then defected to China. CK was unable to win a medal. And Rafer, who had formed a close friendship with Senator Robert Kennedy, was at RFK’s side when he was assassinated in 1968. He overpowered the shooter and took his gun.
The tragedies hit both men hard, but the friendship they maintained helped each of them cope and recover. CK was at Rafer’s wedding in 1971. Rafer was at CK’s deathbed in 2007.
Such a powerful story about friendship, competition, sportsmanship, loyalty and love is rare these days, especially in the unforgiving world of elite sport.
Consider the political pressures these two men faced – CK as a symbol of Taiwan in the ongoing struggle against communist China, Rafer as an icon of civil rights in a dangerous time in the United States. Fast forward 64 years to the present day, and the issues that shaped these two men back then – the tensions between Taiwan and China and the fight for social justice in the United States – still dominate the headlines.
Moreover, John and I, longtime American journalists—we belong to a generation only slightly younger than Rafer and CK and have spent much of our careers in Asia—found that this story had particular resonance.
Therefore, it seemed to me that the forces that shaped their lives are still at work today, making this not just another old sports saga, but one with contemporary relevance.
But turning it into a documentary was no easy task. The search for archival material took us to Taiwan and across the United States, where we combed through private and government archives, declassified documents, and hours of home videos generously provided by the Johnson family.
John Krich had videotaped five hours of interviews with CK in 2006—the last interview Yang conducted before his death. But it wasn’t until we discovered an old CD of Rafer reading the audiobook of his autobiography, recorded over 20 years ago, that we were able to add his own voice.
We teamed up with Taiwanese-Canadian director Frank W. Chen. His last film to appear on Netflix was Late Life: The Chien-ming Wang Story, the story of a Taiwanese baseball player who was briefly a star pitcher for the New York Yankees before his career was cruelly ended by injuries. Frank was immediately drawn to the Rafer CK story, but then Covid intervened, with Taiwan shutting itself off from the rest of the world for more than two years, slowing our progress.
Still, we persisted because we believed this inspiring story was worth telling and wanted to do so around the 2024 Summer Olympics. Rafer’s widow, Betsy, told me, “It’s important for people to remember this. They should know about Rafer and CK. There are so many things in it that apply to life today.”
And that’s probably the main reason John and I stuck with this project for so long. Rafer and CK’s story is full of sporting drama, political drama, personal triumphs and tragedies. But most of all, it’s the story of a lifelong friendship that gives the film its power.
Former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, one of Rafer’s closest friends, told me, “Two different cultures, two different nationalities. They were at the peak of their careers – the toughest athletic competition in the world – and they ended up loving each other.”
Mike Chinoy is the co-creator, co-writer, and co-producer of Decathlon: The CK Yang and Rafer Johnson Story. He is a senior fellow at the US-China Institute at the University of Southern California, a former foreign correspondent for CNN, and the author of five books, most recently Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic.
Pictures provided by the author.
