Yang Chuan-kwang, or C.K. Yang (Amis: Maysang Kalimud, Chinese: 楊傳廣; pinyin: Yáng Chuánguǎng; July 10, 1933 – January 27, 2007), was an Olympic decathlete from Taiwan.[1] Yang attended college at UCLA, where he trained and competed with teammate and Olympian Rafer Johnson and was coached by Elvin C. Drake.
Early life
Yang played baseball at the Taitung Agricultural School and was coached by former Kano baseball team player Chen Keng-yuan in the 1940s.[2]
Career
Known as the "Iron Man of Asia,"[3] Yang won the decathlon event at the 1954 and 1958 Asian Games, as well as silver medals in the 110 m hurdles and long jump and the bronze medal in the 400 m hurdles. At the 1956 Summer Olympics he placed eighth in the decathlon. He also competed in the high jump.[1]
Yang's most memorable decathlon competition was a decathlon duel with Rafer Johnson, his friend and teammate at the University of California at Los Angeles, during the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. The lead swung back and forth between them. Finally, after nine events, Johnson led Yang by a small margin, but Yang was known to be better in the final event, the 1500m. According to The Telegraph (UK), "legend has it" that Drake gave coaching to both men, with him advising Johnson to stay close to Yang and be ready for "a hellish sprint" at the end, and advising Yang to put as much distance between himself and Johnson before the final sprint as possible. Johnson ran his personal best at 4:49.7 and finished just 1.2 sec slower than Yang, winning the gold by 58 points with an Olympic record total of 8,392 points. Both athletes were exhausted and drained and came to a stop a few paces past the finish line leaning against each other for support. Yang was the first Olympic medallist in his country's history.[1]
In 1963, Yang set a world indoor record in the pole vault at 4.96 m (16 ft 3+1⁄4 in) in Portland, just one day after David Tork had set the record at 4.93 m (16 ft 2 in) in Toronto.[4] His record only lasted a week. Later that year he finally took the decathlon world record from Johnson at the Mt. SAC Relays, coached by William Neufeld. He was the first man to break the 9,000 barrier under the old scale. When the new tables were re-evaluated, this same score was the first to break 8,000 points under the new system. To date, he is the only athlete not from the United States or Europe to hold the decathlon world record.[5]
After Yang's retirement from athletics, he worked as a trainer and supervisor at the National Sports Training Center in Zuoying, where Ku Chin-shui and Lee Fu-an were trained. After that, Yang converted to Taoism from Christianity, and served as a Taoist priest and a Tangki in a Taoist temple in his native place for 20 years.[9]
Yang was a member of the Amis, one of the sixteen officially recognized peoples of Taiwanese aborigines. He had a wife, Daisy, and two sons: Cedric Yang (Yang Sui-yuen) and C.K. Yang Jr. and three grandchildren: Madison Yang, Carmen Yang, and Dorothy Yang. In 2001, while serving as president of the National Sports Training Center at Kaohsiung, Yang was diagnosed with liver cancer. He died on January 27, 2007, from a massive stroke.[10] He is buried at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura, California.
The Games of the XVII Olympiad, Rome 1960: Official Report of the Organizing Committee, The Organizing Committee of the Games of the XVII Olympiad, 1960.
Volume 1, Yang's entry and vital statistics in the List of Athletes, p. 832
Volume 2 Part 1, results and nine photographs of Yang during and after the decathlon competition, pp. 160–178
