Editing Bob Mathias (section)

==Early life and athletic career==
Mathias was born in [[Tulare, California]], to a family with partial Greek lineage.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Bob+Mathias | title=Bob Mathias }}</ref> He attended [[Tulare Union High School]],<ref name=congbio/> where he was a classmate and long time friend of [[Sim Iness]], the 1952 Olympic discus gold medalist. While at Tulare Union in early 1948, Mathias took up the decathlon at the suggestion of his track coach, Virgil Jackson. During the summer following his high school graduation, he qualified for the United States Olympic team for the [[1948 Summer Olympics]] held in London.

In the Olympics, Mathias's naïveté about the decathlon was exposed.<ref name="latimes">{{cite web |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-sep-03-me-mathias3-story.html |title=Bob Mathias, 75; Decathlon Ace Was Actor, Congressman |work=Los Angeles Times |date=September 3, 2006 |access-date=April 9, 2014 |author=Crowe, Jerry |archive-date=September 18, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180918170147/http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/03/local/me-mathias3 |url-status=live}}</ref> He was unaware of the rules in the [[shot put]] and nearly fouled out of the event. He almost failed in the [[high jump]] but was able to recover. 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. At age 17, he became the youngest gold medalist in a track and field event.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Book of Olympic Lists |url=https://archive.org/details/bookofolympiclis0000wall |via=archive.org |url-access=registration |first=David |last=Wallechinsky |year=2012 |isbn=978-1845137731 |page=[https://archive.org/details/bookofolympiclis0000wall/page/23 23]}}</ref>

Mathias continued to succeed in decathlons in the four years between the London games and the [[1952 Summer Olympics]] in Helsinki.<ref name=sr/> 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]],<ref name=congbio/> a well-respected all-boys boarding school in [[Saltsburg, Pennsylvania]]. He then entered [[Stanford University]] in 1949, played [[college football]] for two years and was a member of [[Phi Gamma Delta]] fraternity. Mathias set his first [[Decathlon world record progression|decathlon world record]] in 1950<ref name=tf/> and led Stanford to a [[Rose Bowl Game|Rose Bowl]] appearance in [[1952 Rose Bowl|1952]], the first nationally televised college football game.

After graduating from Stanford in 1953 with a BA in Education, Mathias spent two and a half years in the [[U.S. Marine Corps]]. He was promoted to the rank of captain and was honorably discharged.<ref name=obit/>

At Helsinki in 1952, Mathias established himself as one of the world's greatest all-around athletes. He 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.<ref name=sr2/> He returned to the United States as a national hero. His 7,887 point total at the Helsinki Olympics remained the school record at Stanford for 63 years until it was broken in 2015 by a freshman, Harrison Williams.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gostanford.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=30600&ATCLID=210852423 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160530022737/http://www.gostanford.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=30600 |archive-date=2016-05-30 |title=Williams Breaks Record Again |website=GoStanford.com |date=March 31, 2016}}</ref> In 1952, he was the first person to compete in an Olympics and a Rose Bowl the same year.

After the 1952 Olympics, Mathias retired from athletic competition. He later became the first director of the [[United States Olympic Training Center]], a post he held from 1977 to 1983.<ref name=obit/>

He and his wife Melba can be seen on the edition of April 29, 1954, of ''[[You Bet Your Life]]''. During the discussion he mentions a forthcoming film in which the couple played themselves, called ''[[The Bob Mathias Story]]''. He also starred in a number of mostly cameo-type roles in a variety of movies and TV shows throughout the 1950s. In the 1959–1960 television season, Mathias played Frank Dugan, with costars [[Keenan Wynn]] as Kodiak and [[Chet Allen (actor)|Chet Allen]] as Slats, in the TV series ''[[The Troubleshooters (1959 TV series)|The Troubleshooters]]'', which featured 26 episodes on events at construction sites.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052519/ |title=''The Troubleshooters'' |work=IMDb |access-date=2018-06-29 |archive-date=2018-09-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180918170213/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052519/ |url-status=live}}</ref> In 1960, he also appeared as an athletic [[Theseus]] in an Italian "peplum," or [[sword-and-sandal]], film: [[Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0558751/ |title=Bob Mathias (1930–2006) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180918170205/https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0558751/ |archive-date=2018-09-18 |work=IMDb}}</ref>