It's very warm there, so we were outdoors all the time. The local people had programs for us year-round, where as kids we had the opportunity to play football, basketball, baseball, track and field - we just went from one sport to the next, year-round.

Addition Rafer now acts as the athletic advisor to Dan Guerrero Director of Athletics at UCLA. Johnson read for and got the role but was forced to turn it down because the Amateur Athletic Union told him it would make him a professional and therefore ineligible for the Olympics. He was chosen to ignite the Olympic Flame during the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Rafer Lewis Johnson (born August 18 1935) is an American former decathlete and film actor.