Episode 435: Decathlon Battles, Clerical Twists, and Athletics West with Roger George
From wrestling irrigation pipes on a Central Valley turkey farm to training at the dawn of professional track and field with Nike’s Athletics West, Roger shares an incredible inside look at the golden era of the decathlon.
From the Turkey Ranch to the Sawdust Pit: Growing up on a large ranch outside Fresno, Roger built work-hardened strength hauling hay and changing irrigation pipes in freezing alfalfa fields before school. He began pole vaulting with tapered Swedish steel poles into sawdust pits in grammar school, won a high school pentathlon, and drew early inspiration from local legend Bob Mathias.
Fresno State & Dutch Warmerdam: Roger stepped into a proven decathlon environment at Fresno State under legendary pole vaulter and coach Dutch Warmerdam. Building on an unexpected background in the 800 meters, Roger developed a lethal decathlon 1,500 meters that became his tactical weapon to hunt down competitors in the final event.
The Clerical Error at the NCAA Championships: Roger recounts his fierce battles against older Swedish international athletes recruited by BYU, including Raimo Pihl. In one national championship, Roger ran a clutch 4:15.5 1,500m to seemingly fall just five points short—only for Track & Field News to uncover a year later that officials used the wrong scoring tables; a rescore revealed an exact tie, won by Roger on the event-by-event tiebreaker.
Heartbreak at the 1976 Olympic Trials: Competing in Eugene alongside Bruce Jenner during his world-record performance, Roger placed an agonizingly close fourth behind Fred Samara to take the alternate spot. A year later, Olympic coach Sam Adams revealed that an electronic timing failure during the meet required fallback hand-times for competitors other than Jenner and Roger, creating discrepancies that likely cost Roger a spot in Montreal.
Pioneering Professionalism with Athletics West: In 1978, Nike signed Roger as one of its original 30 athletes for Athletics West in Eugene. Roger describes the surreal transition from college poverty to elite athlete care—earning stipends as "quality control testers," utilizing an all-access gear room, working with full-time physiologists, and being coached by legends Tom Tellez, Bill Bowerman, Mac Wilkins, and Al Feuerbach.
The 1980 Olympic Boycott & Stream Therapy: When news broke mid-trials that the United States would officially boycott the 1980 Moscow Games, Roger and several top decathletes processed the gut punch by heading into the Oregon wilderness to fish for trout.
Life Beyond Track: How the meticulous technical discipline of four Olympic coaches translated into Roger’s post-track life as a record-holding inland striper guide, longtime outdoor columnist for The Fresno Bee, and close friend of legendary Nike designer Tinker Hatfield.
