Dan and Dave: Memorable in many ways
“Dan and Dave” personified the decathlon in the USA 20 years ago, even though their famous Reebok ad campaign didn’t turn out as expected.
Before Dan O’Brien’s shocking “no-height” in the pole vault in the 1992 Olympic trials took him out of the running, he and Dave Johnson were the stars of a $25 million campaign that asked, “Who’s the World’s Greatest Athlete?”
“I felt like I was part of something big,” Johnson says. “I look back at those times, and that was something I haven’t really seen for track and field since.”
Johnson, hampered by a broken foot and competing against doctors’ advice, won the bronze medal in Barcelona while Robert Zmelik of Czechoslovakia captured the coveted title.
“So many people think that (the campaign) was a failure,” says Bryan Clay, the 2008 Olympic champion. “How could it have been a failure? Dan and Dave are still known for that. ”
And, Johnson says, “Reebok announced they’d had bigger sales than ever.”
The duo appeared in more than a dozen commercials that not only showed their baby pictures but also, in O’Brien’s favorite, “Who makes the most noise?” had them yelling while throwing the discus and in the weight room.
“I got to watch Dave or he got to watch me, so it was like, ‘Heck, if he can do it, I can do it,’ ” O’Brien says. “Even during the commercials, our competitiveness was coming through.”
Those commercials were scrapped after O’Brien’s trials debacle, and new ones were filmed showing O’Brien coaching Johnson and cheering him on. O’Brien went to Barcelona as an NBC commentator.
But the public never let him forget what had happened.
“I think I became kind of a poster child for people that failed,” O’Brien says, noting parents and coaches asked him to comfort devastated young athletes. “They would seek me out because they saw me handle that failure very, very well.”
When he became the “World’s Greatest Athlete” four years later in Atlanta, “It was a feeling of relief that I won that gold medal, not a feeling of jubilation or exhilaration; it was just relief.”
O’Brien, 45, is a volunteer assistant coach at Arizona State.
He will be the on-field emcee at the U.S. Olympic trials. His autobiography, Clearing Hur
dles, was just released, and he’s being inducted this year into the U.S. Olympic and international track and field hall of fames.
“For a guy who’s not competing anymore,” he says. “I’ve had a hell of a year.” Johnson, 49, whose autobiography is titled Aim
High, has been athletics director for three years at Corban University in Salem, Ore., where he finds himself involved in promotion.
He says he’ll show some of the Warriors athletes the old Dan and Dave commercials to give them a sense of his background. “I say, ‘Ask your parents and have them tell you who the Dave guy is,” he said. “‘They’ll remember.’ ”