Documenting an Unexpected Friendship Between Olympic Decathletes
The 2024 Paris Olympics are in full swing, with Taiwan having sent 60 of its top athletes to compete. This week on Zoom In Zoom Out, we look back into Taiwan’s complex history with the Olympics through a new documentary called "Decathlon: The C.K. Yang and Rafer Johnson Story."
In today’s episode, TaiwanPlus reporter Jeremy Olivier sits down with the film’s producer, Mike Chinoy. Mike is also a veteran journalist formerly with CNN. We first zoom in on the genesis of the documentary, then zoom out to understand the politics surrounding national sports.
In today’s episode, TaiwanPlus reporter Jeremy Olivier sits down with the film’s producer, Mike Chinoy. Mike is also a veteran journalist formerly with CNN. We first zoom in on the genesis of the documentary, then zoom out to understand the politics surrounding national sports.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome to Zoom In, Zoom Out, your global look at news from Taiwan. I'm Jeremy Olivier.
00:17The 2024 Summer Olympics is now underway in Paris. Taiwan has fielded 60 of its top athletes
00:23to compete. Today, we're taking a look back at some of the history of Taiwan's participation
00:28in this event through a new documentary on Taiwan Plus. Decathlon, the CK Yang and Rafer
00:34Johnson story, is about the unlikely but enduring friendship between two athletes from opposite
00:39ends of the world, as well as the joys and hardships they experienced in their extraordinary
00:43careers. To learn more about Yang and Johnson and the legacies they've left behind, I'm
00:49joined today by Decathlon's producer and one of its narrators, former CNN reporter, Mike
00:53Chinoy. Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
00:57I first want to zoom in on just how this film came to be. I want to start off by asking,
01:03what drew you to the story in the first place? Well, it's a long story. It began when my
01:08co-writer, John Critch, was working as a correspondent for the Asian Wall Street Journal. In 2006,
01:16he was working on a series about Asian Olympic legends in the run up to the Beijing Games.
01:22He had been in Rome in 1960 as a kid with his family. And he vaguely remembered the
01:27name CK Yang. And so he was curious. He wondered, after all of these decades, whatever happened
01:35to CK Yang? And he managed to track CK down at the National Sports Training Center in
01:41Kaohsiung. He met him. They got to be friends. And he recorded several hours of interviews.
01:48He wrote his article. And then the following year, CK died. And after that, John and I
01:54had talked about, there must be something we can do with this wonderful material. But
01:58for a variety of reasons, it took a very long time, during which I got to know Rafer Johnson.
02:05And it's such a compelling story that it just drew me in. Here you have these two guys from
02:13opposite sides of the world who would, under normal circumstances, have never met. And
02:18not only did they meet, and not only did their duel in the 1960 Rome Olympics become
02:24one of the iconic moments and remains one of the iconic moments in Olympic history,
02:30but unknown to most people throughout this period, they were the best of friends.
02:35You talked about the long term nature of this project. Around how long did it take to get
02:40the documentary made? And what were some of the challenges you faced along the way?
02:43Well, we started for real in 2019. We enlisted a terrific director, Frank W. Chen, Chen Weiyang,
02:51whose previous film, Late Life, the Wang Jianming story, is a wonderful film about the Taiwanese
02:57baseball player Wang Jianming, who was a star pitcher for the New York Yankees until his career
03:02was cut short by injury. And Frank immediately got the idea of the story. So we began work on
03:08it. And then COVID came along. And that messed everything up because it meant that it was not
03:14possible to come to Taiwan unless you actually had a work visa. But we persevered. It took a
03:21tremendous amount of digging. I mean, this is all stuff that happened over half a century ago.
03:26So we had to go through film archives, we had to go through document archives, we had to find old
03:35photos. We were very lucky. The Johnson family gave us all of their home videos, which were a
03:41remarkable resource. We had to track down other pictures and moving images, we had to license
03:48them. We went through multiple drafts trying to figure out the best way to tell it in a way that
03:54shared the Rafer and CK story, but made it contemporary. So it was a very long, hard
04:00slog to produce what is now on the air.
04:03One of the most striking things about the documentary to me were the wonderful animations
04:08that were used to illustrate throughout it. But from what I understand, that wasn't the
04:13production's first choice. So can you tell me a little bit about how you came to make that
04:18stylistic direction?
04:20One of the challenges, frankly, is that the cost of licensing Olympic video is extremely high.
04:26And there isn't all that much, there are just the events, but it's all kind of grainy old footage.
04:32And we thought that to kind of convey the power of the experience of these two athletes competing,
04:39that it would be more effective and more visually interesting to use illustrations and animations.
04:46So we hooked up with a terrific animator named Das Young, who lives in Canada.
04:51And they did these wonderful animations that I think really lift the film to a different level
04:58and make it not just grainy old video and old guys doing sound bites, it gives it a special quality.
05:05Despite that, you know, you were still able to use the most memorable piece of media of Young
05:10and Johnson's friendship, that iconic photo of them at the 1960 Rome Olympics,
05:16Johnson's arm around Young, his chin on his shoulder. Can you just talk a little bit about
05:21that photo and its significance?
05:23Well, this was and remains one of the great iconic sports photos of all time.
05:31The decathlon in Rome in 1960 was a very tight contest. The lead went back and forth,
05:38and it came down to the final few seconds of the final event.
05:44The way the decathlon is scored, you get points for each event.
05:47So it's not whether you win the event, it's by how much you win the event.
05:51In terms of the point calculation, Johnson got the gold and Young got the silver.
05:56But at the end of the race, the two collapsed in each other's
05:59arms and somebody snapped a photo of it.
06:02And it's just, it so exemplifies what was special about these two guys.
06:08And in the film, Johnson talks about as happy as he was that he won the gold,
06:13he felt bad for his best friend who didn't win.
06:17And CK had the same reaction, as sad as he was that he didn't win and he only got silver,
06:23he was so happy that it was Reifu who got the gold.
06:26And the photo really exemplifies the friendship that was at the core
06:31of their relationship and that's at the center of the film.
06:35Mike, we're going to zoom out now and take a look at some of the broader issues that
06:39the film touched on, including the fraught politics around Taiwan's participation in the games.
06:45That includes how Taiwan must name itself in order to compete.
06:49We'll return to our conversation in the studio in just a minute,
06:52but first let's dig deeper into how this name, which is now Chinese Taipei,
06:56affects Taiwan's athletes and its people with this report from John Ventriest.
07:05On the sidelines of the Paris Olympics, words that could have caused trouble if
07:08they'd been spoken at any of the official venues.
07:11Under a 1981 agreement, Taiwan's national team is barred from using the national flag
07:16or anthem at the games, and they must compete under the name Chinese Taipei.
07:21China says Taiwan is its rightful territory,
07:23and does not tolerate anything, even a name, that could imply otherwise.
07:28But for the second summer games in a row, a local anchor in the host city has explained
07:32to viewers watching the opening ceremony that Chinese Taipei is Taiwan.
07:37At first, Taiwanese sports fans in Paris couldn't believe it.
07:41I heard Taiwan, and I was so happy.
07:43I thought, did I hear it wrong?
07:45So I went back and watched it again, and it was really Taiwan.
07:49I shared it with my friends in Taiwan, and we were all so happy.
07:52Athletes themselves are wary about weighing in.
07:55Just bringing Taiwan's flag to an international sporting event can be grounds for disqualification,
07:59as Taiwan's first-ever male Olympic gold medalist explains.
08:03If we give up our name or change it,
08:06they might think we're breaking the rules.
08:09I think that's a huge risk.
08:11If we're really disqualified, if we really can't compete,
08:17what are we going to do?
08:22You can watch the full report on the Taiwan Plus website.
08:26Now, back to our conversation with you, Mike.
08:28So the year that Yang competed in Rome was also, coincidentally,
08:32the first year that Taiwan was forced to compete under a different name.
08:36But at that time, it wasn't a matter of Chinese Taipei versus Taiwan, was it?
08:40No.
08:40What happened in 1960 was very interesting, and we deal with it at length in the film.
08:46The International Olympic Committee was trying very hard
08:49to get the Chinese communists to send a team.
08:52And so in order to lure them, they said to Taiwan,
08:57you can participate, but you can't call yourself the Zhonghua Mingguo, the Republic of China.
09:02You have to just be Taiwan.
09:04And Chiang Kai-shek, the ruler of Taiwan, was so angry at this
09:09that he almost considered ordering the team to boycott the Games.
09:14And the only reason that he didn't was because he calculated that CK Yang,
09:19by winning a medal, could bring glory to Taiwan
09:24and sort of help score points in this endless struggle with Beijing.
09:29So that was one of the intense pressures that Yang faced.
09:35But interestingly, it wasn't the only one,
09:37because at that point, no person with a Chinese surname had ever won an Olympic medal.
09:44So Yang carried this double pressure.
09:46But in the end, Chiang Kai-shek said, OK, you can participate.
09:50And Yang did win the medal.
09:53But at the opening ceremony, the Taiwan team marched in,
09:57and they carry a placard that says, Under Protest.
10:00And they marched past where the head of the IOC was sitting.
10:03And it was the first overt political protest by a team in Olympic history.
10:09And it just goes to show that even 64 years ago,
10:14this issue of how Taiwan was going to call itself
10:18in order to be able to participate in the Games was a very fraught one.
10:22So this shadow of the Taiwan-China battle loomed
10:27over CK's sporting life in very important ways.
10:33Decathlon also gave quite a bit of insight
10:36into the racial dimension of Yang and Johnson's friendship.
10:41Both men were from marginalized communities.
10:44Yang, who is indigenous Samis,
10:46spoke of being treated as a third-class citizen in his own country.
10:51How did that inform his connection with Johnson,
10:53as well as his time living and training in the U.S.?
10:57CK Yang was aware, obviously, that he was Amis.
11:00But he wasn't a kind of Amis activist.
11:03It wasn't. That wasn't the way things were done back then.
11:08But at the same time, when he went to the States in 1958
11:12to train at UCLA with Johnson under their wonderful coach
11:16that they shared with the great name of Ducky Drake,
11:19he was naively unaware of all the racial tensions in the States.
11:23But CK Yang in the film talks about going to a track meet in New Orleans.
11:28And a teammate, also of color, said to him when they got on the bus,
11:33you know, here all colored people have to sit in the back of the bus
11:38and you're a person of color and I'm a person of color,
11:40so we have to join the back people sitting in the back of the bus.
11:43And CK said that was an absolute revelation to him
11:47because he was, in a sense, colorblind.
11:50It made no difference to him what color anybody was.
11:53And part of what's interesting is that the way that affected
11:55his friendship and relationship with Johnson,
11:58he was kind of absorbed into the Johnson family.
12:01Rafer would bring him home.
12:02His mom would cook up these big southern meals.
12:05The family came from Texas originally.
12:07It was the first time CK ever eaten black-eyed peas
12:10and other soul food and so on.
12:12And he just, you know, absorbed all of that, embraced it.
12:15It was just complete, it was just not, it was a non-issue.
12:18He didn't judge people by how they looked
12:20and that, I think, is one of the wonderful qualities about him.
12:24And frankly, it's one of the wonderful qualities about Rafer as well.
12:27Something that the film did stress was the contrasting legacies
12:31that these two men have left behind in their home countries.
12:35You know, Johnson achieved a measure of fame
12:37and recognition that lived on beyond his death.
12:40But the same can't necessarily be said of Young.
12:43Why is that?
12:45It's hard to say, but I think it's true.
12:49At UCLA, they named the Running Track Stadium after Rafer Johnson.
12:55There was a big exhibition in his honor in Los Angeles a few years ago.
13:00When he died, it was on the national news.
13:03It was in every major newspaper and so on.
13:05Somehow CK Young has been forgotten here.
13:08The government gave him a house in Taedong,
13:11which is known as the Iron Man House,
13:13as a reward after his achievements in 1960.
13:17But the house is now run down.
13:19Nobody lives in it.
13:20There's no museum in his honor.
13:22They're a fourth floor, generally locked room
13:26at the National Olympic Training Center in Kaohsiung.
13:29There's a collection of CK memorabilia statues and posters and so on.
13:34But it's not easily accessible to the public.
13:37One of our hopes with this film is to share the story of CK Young
13:43with a new generation here,
13:45because there's so much that you can learn about sports,
13:49about courage, and above all, about friendship
13:52that endures beyond these two men's own lives
13:57from looking at what they experienced.
14:00Hopefully that will make people remember CK
14:04in a way that he deserves to be remembered.
14:06Yeah, I hope so too.
14:08Thank you so much for joining us today, Mike,
14:10and sharing your experiences with this documentary.
14:12I'm very glad to be here. Thanks.
14:15Decathlon, the CK Young and Rafer Johnson story
14:18is now streaming on the Taiwan Plus website and social media,
14:21where you can watch it and other programs from Taiwan Plus.
14:25This has been Zoom In Zoom Out.
14:27Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.