Olympic decathlon gold medalist Rafer Johnson, who lit the torch at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to open the 1984 Summer Games, passed away this year. Beyond his decorated athletic career, Johnson gained fame for helping to capture assassin Sirhan Sirhan after the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1968. The UCLA graduate also was renowned for his sportsmanship and civic generosity, co-founding Special Olympics Southern California in 1969 and serving as its president for 10 years. Johnson was hailed as the “World’s Greatest Athlete” after he won the grueling 10-event decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics, where he also broke social barriers as the first Black flag bearer for the United States. He eventually set three decathlon world records three different times in his career.