Arithmetic was the furthest thing from Milt Campbell's mind when he sat in math class at Plainfield High School back in 1951.
Campbell was a 16 year-old sophomore at the time, and all he could think about was the conversation he had just had with his track and field coach, Harold Bruguiere, which would change the course of his life.
"We were talking about some of the things I wanted to accomplish and I told him I wanted to be the best ever at Plainfield and maybe the best in New Jersey," Campbell said in an interview with The Star-Ledger in 1999. "My coach said forget about that, you can be the best athlete in the world. I asked him how I could do that. He told me the only way was to win the decathlon at the Olympics."
Then Campbell went off to math class.
"I just sat in class wondering what the heck a decathlon was," Campbell said. "I never heard of it."
After class, Campbell stopped to see Bruguiere to find out more about the decathlon.
Bruguiere took Campbell to the library.
"I got out a book on Jim Thorpe," Campbell said. "From that moment on I dedicated my life to winning the Olympic decathlon. Not because I loved the decathlon, but because that was my vehicle to being the greatest athlete in the world. If he told me that climbing Mount Everest would make me the greatest athlete in the world, I would have done that."
A year later, between his junior and senior years at Plainfield, Campbell nearly earned the coveted title when he won the silver medal at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, placing behind defending champion Bob Mathias of the U.S.
"I was just a high school kid and I was hanging with the best athletes in the world," Campbell said. "I was just happy to be there, but at the same time, I wasn't intimidated or nervous. I knew four years later I would get the gold."
He did just that in Melbourne, Australia, scoring 7,937 points, an Olympic record at the time, to become the first black athlete to win the grueling event. If it weren't for shin splits and a bad cold, Campbell almost certainly would have broken the world record of 7,955 held by American Rafer Johnson. Campbell beat Johnson, the silver medalist, by 350 points in 1956.
"I told Rafer in a hotel two nights before the decathlon started that I was going to whip him good," Campbell said. "I knew I was the best in the world. Winning the gold was a great feeling of accomplishment. I set a goal and I went out and did it."
Campbell didn't compete again in the decathlon after his gold-medal performance.
"I already showed that I was the greatest athlete in the world, what else did I have to prove?" he said.
With Campbell out of the picture, Johnson got his gold in 1960 in Rome, breaking Campbell's Olympic record. There has been debate concerning who is the greatest decathlete of all-time ever since.
"If you throw all of us in the same pot in our prime at the same Olympics, I feel I would have beat all of them," Campbell said.
After his historic win in Melbourne, Campbell set world records in both the indoor 60-yard high hurdles, and the 120-yard hurdles in 1957. Campbell is still the only Olympic decathlon gold medalist to have held a world record in an individual event!
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CAMPBELL COULD DO EVERYTHING
While most people only know Campbell through his track and field exploits, he was far more than that a one-more sport star.
Campbell, a 6-3, 217-pound bundle of brawn in his heyday, is the undisputed G.O.AT. when it comes to the best all-round athletes to ever come out of New Jersey. And it really isn't debatable.
Campbell, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 78 after a long battle with prostate cancer, could do everything!!
While at Plainfield High he was also an All-American swimmer, was named to The Star-Ledger Football Team of the Decade for the 1950s as a running back. And he once filled in for Plainfield's heavyweight and pinned one of the best wrestlers in the state!!
Did you know that Campbell is the only athlete enshrined in both the National Track and Field Hall of Fame and the International Swimming Hall of Fame!!! And that he also played in the NFL!!!
After graduating from Plainfield in 1953, Campbell attended Indiana University for two years, winning the NCAA and AAU high hurdles championships and playing defensive back and halfback on the football team. He left Indiana in 1955 and joined the Navy. While stationed in San Diego, Campbell kept up his training for the '56 Olympics.
In 1957, Campbell was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in 1957 and played in the same backfield as Hall of Famer Jim Brown for one season. Campbell then played professionally for seven years in the Canadian Football League before finishing his career in 1964.
It's easy to see why Campbell was chosen as The Athlete of the Century in NJ by The Star-Ledger in 2000.
Legendary Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan said in 2000 that Campbell was "the greatest athlete who ever lived."
Campbell, who could spin a yarn with the best of the them, told a great story to The Star-Ledger back in 2011 about his one and done wrestling career.
"One day I told the swimming coach I didn't feel good, and he said, 'OK, come back tomorrow.' But I really wanted to just watch the wrestling match against Thomas Jefferson (now Elizabeth) High, because they had a heavyweight who was the best in the state - he lost one match in his whole career, to (Mike) Sandusky of Bound Brook, who went on to play for the Steelers. "The match came down to the heavyweights and Jefferson is up by a point, and I could heard someone in the locker room throwing up. I ask the coach (Abe Smith), what's wrong. He told me his heavyweight is a little scared of the guy. So I say, 'Well, I'll wrestle him.' Abe laughed and said, 'You're a sophomore - this guy will pin you back so far behind your ears he'll make you kiss yourself.' Some assistant tells Abe, 'Go ahead, what do we have to lose?' Abe relented. "So I put the stuff on, the ref says, 'Go,' and the guy slaps me on the side of my face. He slapped me. I couldn't believe it. I told him, 'You do that one more time, I'll kick your ass.' The ref stops the match, tells us to keep our mouths shut.
"We go out a second time, and he throws his hand up again. So I duck under it, grab him around his neck, and picked him straight up. I was gonna bring him down on his head. Everyone is hollering, 'Go down on one knee!' I thought you could throw him like judo, but what did I know? So I went down on a knee, squeezed him as tight as I could, and I pinned him in 1:28. "And I'll never forget it: That's when Abe turns to the crowd and he says, 'This Campbell kid thinks he can do just about anything - and he's probably right.'"
How about that!
Campbell was such a great athlete that he nearly made the 1972 Olympic Judo team that competed in Munich!!! Yeah, you read that right!
Campbell's trainer, two-time Olympic judo coach Yoshishada Yoneska, said he felt Campbell would make the team, but when it was discovered that he played professional football he was ruled ineligible and had his AAU card taken away.
I told you Milt Campbell could do it all.
Campbell was way ahead of his time. He truly was one of a kind!
