Olympic-level athletes push themselves to the absolute physical limits of the human
form, and while they may seem invincible, they're only human.
Here are some athletes who made their dreams come true when they competed in the Olympics
and died without the fanfare they deserved.
Obviously, he was a good enough boxer to make it onto the U.S. Olympic team for the 1976
games in Montreal, but Leon Spinks became an overnight sensation when he rose from obscurity
to take home the gold medal in the light-heavyweight division that summer.
One of the breakout stars of the Olympics, Spinks turned pro soon after and fought in
only seven professional bouts — winning six of them and battling to one draw — before
major promoter Bob Arum set him up to fight the legendary Muhammad Ali in Las Vegas in
February 1978.
In one of the greatest upsets in sports history, Spinks beat Ali, then lost to him in a rematch
later that year.
He retired from boxing in 1995.
In December 2019, Spinks' family announced that the former boxer was undergoing treatment
for cancer, which had originated in the prostate and spread to the bladder.
Spinks died in February 2021 in Nevada at the age of 67.
Winning the decathlon is such a complete and varied display of strength, speed, and agility
that whoever wins it at the Olympic level earns the unofficial title of "World's Greatest
Athlete."
Because of that, Rafer Johnson was once the undisputed greatest athlete on the planet.
Johnson won the American national championship in the event in 1956, the same year he won
a silver medal for the decathlon at the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
Four years later, hopes were so high for Johnson that he was Team USA's flag bearer in the
opening ceremonies for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, where he'd win the gold medal in
decathlon.
In one final and profound display of what Johnson meant to the Games, he lit the Olympic
cauldron at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, symbolically giving the go-ahead
for the event to proceed.
Johnson even helped form the Special Olympics, both the overarching organization and the
California chapter.
In 1998, ESPN named him one of the 100 Top North American Athletes of the century.
According to a friend of the family, Johnson died at home in Sherman Oaks, California,
in December 2020.
He was 86.
No matter what level of basketball, or his role in the organization, K.C. Jones had a
knack for winning championships.
An inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Jones played in the NBA from
1958 to 1967, and in those nine seasons, all of them for the Boston Celtics, he helped
win eight championships.
As a coach, he won three more titles, one as an assistant for the Los Angeles Lakers
and two as a head coach in the 1980s for the Celtics, according to ESPN.
Jones was a master of amateur hoops, too.
He helped lead the University of San Francisco to national championships in 1955 and 1956,
and shortly after that second one, he won a gold medal when he played for the U.S. basketball
team at the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
Jones is one of just eight people to win an NCAA title, an NBA ring, and an Olympic gold
medal.
In December 2020, Jones' family announced that the athlete, who had been treated for
Alzheimer's disease over the previous few years, had died.
Jones was 88.
At age 19, Florence Griffith quit a promising career as a sprinter to get a job as a bank
teller, which is where running coach Bob Kersee discovered her and brought her back into UCLA,
and the school's track and field department.
By age 24, Griffith was competing in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, winning a
silver medal in the 200-meters.
She'd also pick up the nickname "FloJo" after marrying Olympic triple-jumper Al Joyner and
going by Florence Griffith-Joyner.
FloJo solidified her legend at the next games, the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.
She won three gold medals, including the 100-meters and 200-meters events for which she set long-standing
world records, plus another first-place finish in the 4x100 relay and a second-place result
in the 4x400 relay.
When she returned to the states, she was a bonafide pop culture sensation, with numerous
talk show appearances and cameos on sitcoms.
"If I had quit every time I came in third, the closest I would have gotten to Korea was
watching MASH reruns."
According to the Chicago Tribune, Griffith-Joyner died in her Mission Viejo, California, home
in September 1998.
The Orange County coroner ruled that she suffered a seizure related to epilepsy, which then
caused her to suffocate.
FloJo was 38 years old.
Lee Evans made Olympics and sports history in under a minute.
At the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City, he became the first person to run the 400-meters
in less than 44 seconds.
Evans' track teammates Tommie Smith and John Carlos famously raised their fists, the Black
Power salute, on the medals stand after proving victorious in their events and were sent home
for it.
Warned by officials to not try anything similar, Evans took the medals podium wearing a black
beret — like those worn by the countercultural revolutionary group the Black Panthers.
He also gave the Black Power salute but remained in Mexico City, where he then led the 4x400-meters
relay team to a gold medal.
Evans also won five national championships in the 400-meters and was inducted into the
U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, coached track at several colleges, and served as director of
athletics for the Special Olympics.
In recent years, Evans had moved to Nigeria to work as a high school track coach.
In May 2021, he suffered a stroke and died a week later.
He was 74.
The toast of the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome was American sprinter Wilma Rudolph.
She walked away from the Games with the title and nickname "the fastest woman in the world,"
and with good reason.
Rudolph won three gold medals during a single Olympics, the first American woman to ever
do that, and she did it while running about as fast as anyone had at that point in history.
Rudolph was just 20 years old when she accomplished all this — and she'd won a bronze medal
as part of the relay team at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, too.
After her own Olympic feats, Rudolph coached other Games-bound runners and served as a
track coach at DePauw University.
She died tragically and relatively young.
In 1994, Rudolph died in Nashville from the effects of brain cancer.
She was 54.
Because he grew up in Lampasas, Texas, coaches called Johnny Jones "Lam," a word that also
means "on the run," suitable for one of the fastest men on the planet in the 1970s.
At age 18, Jones landed a spot on the U.S. track and field team and competed in the 1976
Summer Olympics in Montreal.
As part of the 4x100-meter relay squad, Jones won a gold medal.
Jones was among the rare athletes to find success in two disciplines.
Applying his running skills and abilities to professional team sports, he joined the
New York Jets after the team drafted him with the second pick in the 1980 draft — he was
a standout in the late '70s for the University of Texas, following his successful Olympics
quest.
In March 2019, the University of Texas announced that Jones, who had been diagnosed with cancer
some years earlier, had died.
He was 60 years old.
Mid-century Indian track star Milkha Singh was popularly known as "The Flying Sikh".
Singh was an adherent of the faith who grew up under persecution for his beliefs, according
to the BBC, in the wake of the India-Pakistan partition drawn largely on religious lines.
In 1960, he became the first man from India to make it to an Olympic final when he ran
in the 400-meters at the Summer Olympics in Rome.
Singh came in fourth place during an amazing race in which the first four guys across the
finish line all broke the world record.
He returned to the Olympics in 1964 as part of India's 4x400 relay team, and his story
was adapted into a feature film in 2013.
In June 2021, Singh died of complications related to the COVID-19 virus.
Singh was 91 years old.
Swimming is considered a major sport in Australia, and the nation has produced many champions
over the decades, including brother and sister John and Ilsa Konrads, affectionately nicknamed
"The Konrad Kids."
At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, at just 18-years-old, John Konrads won bronze medals
in the individual 400-meter freestyle and for swimming with the 4x200 freestyle relay
team, not to mention a gold medal in the 1,500-meter event.
Konrads briefly became the face of swimming and the Games, with the New York Times dubbing
him "the wonder boy of the 1960 Olympics."
In April 2001, John Konrads died after a long illness.
The swimmer was 78.
Sarah Tait was among the most accomplished athletes to ever participate in the tough
and competitive world of international-level rowing.
In 2004, she was part of the eight-woman rowing team for her home nation of Australia at that
year's Summer Olympics in Athens and captained the same squad at the 2008 Summer Olympics
in Beijing.
In both instances, the Australian crew finished in sixth place.
Tait fared well at the World Rowing Championships, winning a gold and silver medal at the event
in 2005 and a bronze in 2011.
Finally, at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, as part of a two-person rowing crew event
with Kate Hornsey, Tait captured a silver medal.
In February 2014, Tait had to step away from the sport in order to focus on treating cervical
cancer, facing a diagnosis she had received in March 2013.
Tait died in March 2016 at the age of 33.
In the Olympic cycling event called team pursuit, two teams of riders speed around a velodrome,
a curved and banked indoor track.
One of the best to ever participate in team pursuit: Minnesota native Kelly Catlin.
According to the StarTribune, she took up cycling at age 17 because a bike was the only
exercise she could handle after suffering painful shin splints from running track and
playing soccer.
Amazingly, four years later, Catlin was cycling at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro,
where she won a silver medal to go along with three straight world championships, according
to NPR.
Catlin suffered from physical and mental health problems in the years after her major sports
accomplishments.
In two separate accidents in late 2018, she broke her arm and suffered a concussion.
Her coaches urged her to withdraw from the 2019 Track Cycling World Championships to
focus on her health, following a suicide attempt.
On March 7, 2019, Catlin committed suicide, according to her family.
She was 23.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text
Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI
(6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.