American athlete Rafer Johnson and Yang Chuan-kwang of Taiwan together after completing the 1500m event of the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Johnson went on to win the decathlon with Yang in second place. When the two of them arrived exhausted at the finish line, Rafer Johnson leaned on the shoulder of his close friend "C.K." Yang Chuan-kwang for support.
Yet, he was not perturbed by the mockery he encountered, and with his relatives telling him that he could build up his muscles when he got older, he never gave up on sport. Besides baseball, Yang also dabbled in the long jump and high jump. At the time, Yang didn’t even understand how the points were calculated for the decathlon, and he had never actually completed a whole two-day decathlon trial before he left for Manila. In the end, he finished with 5,454 points, edging the second-placed Japanese athlete by just 25 points, winning Taiwan’s first athletics gold medal at the Asian Games, and earning the nickname "the Iron Man of Asia".
In 1959, Johnson suffered a serious back injury in a car accident. During his recovery and physical therapy, Yang stayed by his side to help him, in the hope that the two of them could compete in the Rome Olympics together. When they stepped onto the field at the 1960 Rome Olympics, they got back to pure competition mode and talked less, but both had conflicted feelings, in that they hoped their opponent would do well, but also wanted to win themselves.
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