SPEAKER_02: Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at iXcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters iXcel dot com slash invisible. Some companies are big, others are small. To Robert Half, their hiring needs are equally huge. At Robert Half, our specialized recruiting professionals elevate their expertise with proprietary A.I. tools to transform candidate discovery, assessment, and selection. Whether sourcing talent locally or in any geography that works for you, Robert Half can pinpoint hard to find candidates in finance and accounting, technology, marketing and creative, legal, and administrative and customer support. At Robert Half, we know talent. Learn more at roberthalf.com slash invisible. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything. Your products, content you create, and even your time. You can easily display posts from your social profiles on your website or share new blogs or videos to social media. Automatically push website content to your favorite channels so your followers can share it too. Go to squarespace dot com slash invisible for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. This is the story of an ad campaign produced for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Perennial runner-up in the sport shoe category, Reebok, was trying to make its mark and take down Nike. They chose two athletes, plucked them out of obscurity, gave them Reeboks to wear, and turned them into household names, spending $25 million in the process. That was more than Reebok's entire marketing budget the previous year. This ad campaign is pretty much remembered as a disaster for Reebok, but it created From Nothing, an epic drama that pitted two world-class decathletes against each other, and it resulted in so many strange twists and turns. All because someone thought it was a clever way to sell shoes. I love this story. This is the first episode of 30 for 30 podcast, which are original audio documentaries from ESPN. These are stories about sports, but they're the sports stories that I like that delve into their impact on culture, politics, and more. Here's host Jody Avrigan to guide you through the trials of Dan and Dave.
SPEAKER_05: Live at the Metrodome in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Super Bowl number 26. So I had a party at my apartment, and I got the six-foot subway sub.
SPEAKER_15: That was the centerpiece, was the six-foot sub. And I, you know, because I had a little money, and it's like, man, I bought all the booze, all the beer. I had quite a few people come over, and it got a little wild. Super Bowl 26, January 26, 1992.
SPEAKER_10: Almost 80 million people watching on television, many of them from parties like the one at Dan O'Brien's house. Everybody was drinking beer, and then we got into the hard alcohol, and it was really fun.
SPEAKER_10: Dan is watching from Moscow, Idaho. Dave Johnson is watching from Los Angeles, California. I probably had 30 or 40 people at my house with multiple TVs set up, and everybody's there,
SPEAKER_03: and I kind of kept it a little bit of a secret, and I just let them know, wait till you see what's going to be on here.
SPEAKER_15: And so the first commercial comes on, and it's super short.
SPEAKER_10: It's in the third quarter, just before a Pepsi ad featuring Cindy Crawford. The first Dan and Dave commercial runs, featuring old photographs and grainy videos of two toddlers, Dan O'Brien and Dave Johnson.
SPEAKER_09: Dan can run 100 meters in 10.3 seconds. Dave can high jump 6 feet, 10 and three-quarter inches. This summer, they'll battle it out in Barcelona for the title of World's Greatest Athlete.
SPEAKER_10: The voiceover expounds on the men's athletic feats, but the visuals are just the photos of the two toddlers.
SPEAKER_15: Me in a bathtub, Dave on a bike. It was just little kids.
SPEAKER_15: And that's it. And everybody kind of looks around like, that's it? What the heck was that?
SPEAKER_10: Then, later in the same commercial break, another short ad runs.
SPEAKER_09: Dan can throw a 16-pound shot put 53 feet, 3 inches.
SPEAKER_10: More pictures and home videos. Only in this one, the kids are a little older, maybe five or six. The second ad ends the same way as the first, a quick Reebok logo and a promise.
SPEAKER_09: This summer, they'll battle it out in Barcelona for the title of World's Greatest Athlete.
SPEAKER_15: I didn't know what to expect. They didn't show us the commercials before we saw them at the Super Bowl.
SPEAKER_10: Reebok ran two more commercials, making four in total, all during the third quarter. And all of them just 15 seconds long.
SPEAKER_09: Dan won the decathlon at the World Track and Field Championships. Dave won the decathlon at the Goodwill Games. This summer, they'll battle it out in Barcelona for the title of World's Greatest Athlete.
SPEAKER_03: I remember people really being confused at first, and then eventually they're going, man, that is genius. They're talking about how amazing that Reebok thought of doing small little commercials, all the way to where there's a culmination of what they really were talking about. And that's these two athletes that are going to go to the Olympics this year, and it's going to be settled in Barcelona.
SPEAKER_10: By the way, the game, it's pretty lame, with Washington beating Buffalo 37-24. But the ads have made their impact.
SPEAKER_15: When the Super Bowl was over and the party was over, and everybody got out of there, it was a little bit shocking, really. It's like, wow, we're here to celebrate commercials that I was in.
SPEAKER_03: I remember sitting with a group of people that I had there, and they were all kind of going, I can't believe I'm sitting, that we're here with Dave. And I never really thought of myself that way, that somebody would think it's cool to be with Dave. That was the first time I really sat there and was going, you know, people are going to know who I am now. And I remember almost being scared, you know, what do you do with that?
SPEAKER_11: Get your body into the rock
SPEAKER_16: In 92, Reebok was known primarily as a shoe that your mom wore to take aerobics classes in. And they were desperate to increase their athletic credibility.
SPEAKER_10: In 1992, Rick Sidig worked for Shiet Day. The ad agency hired to put together Reebok's latest campaign.
SPEAKER_16: Reebok! The task was pretty daunting. We've got two guys no one's ever heard of in an event no one really cares about. All of the best known athletes were Nike athletes, the Michael Jordans of the world, the most famous professional athletes in the world. If we wanted to stand out, we needed to do something else. The basic idea was in sports circles, the winner of the decathlon is the world's greatest athlete. And so it wasn't hard for Reebok to get excited about a campaign that said, who's the world's greatest athlete? This Reebok athlete you've never heard of or this other Reebok athlete you've never heard of?
SPEAKER_15: The Decathlon by Nature The Decathlon by Nature is, in my opinion, the toughest of all the track and field events. The Decathlon is so tough because it combines so much.
SPEAKER_10: It's ten events contested over the course of two days, each one adding to the competitors overall point total. Day one is the 100 meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, and the 400 meter run. Day two is the 110 meter hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, and last, the 1500 meter run. And it attracts some really interesting individuals.
SPEAKER_15: We don't say that athletes find the Decathlon. We say that the Decathlon will find those athletes. That's what happened to me. I think that's what happened to Dave. Born in 1963, Dave Johnson grew up in Montana and Oregon.
SPEAKER_10: By his own admission, he was hardly the model young man. I was one of those kids that was in a lot of trouble growing up.
SPEAKER_03: I was actually throwing snowballs at cars and I think I did definitely learn how to throw so well because I was able to stand farther back than anybody else and throw that apple or throw that snowball, throw that rock. I remember the first time a coach told me what the Decathlon was. He said, you should do the Decathlon. I thought he said Marathon. I said, Coach, no, I'm the hurdler. I don't run distance. He goes, no, no, the Decathlon. He said, you know Bruce Jenner. And I go, well, Bruce Jenner, that's a guy on chips. I remember watching television. Jenner was on a show called Chips at the time. He was doing a cameo with them. So I just knew him as a Hollywood TV guy. He said, no, he was an Olympic medalist. Dave Johnson was hooked. Dan O'Brien also grew up in Oregon, just a few hours south of Dave, near the small town of Klamath Falls.
SPEAKER_10: And he also had his ups and downs before finding his sport. Well, growing up in southern Oregon, to me, always felt like I was out of place.
SPEAKER_15: You know, we had six adopted kids in the family. I have a sister who's biracial like myself, a little brother who's Hispanic. I have a Native American sister and then two Korean sisters. Well, when you're the only kid of color, or kids of color in your entire town, which the O'Brien family was, you know, it's interesting because all you want to do when you're young is fit in. Blend in, go along, get along. And there we are, looking like the Rainbow Coalition.
SPEAKER_15: Every time we get out of the car and go to church, the movies, it's a very weird feeling when everybody's watching you. And I can just remember thinking, you know, why are people staring at me? Why are people staring at us? This is just our regular family. And it wasn't until I got into sports that I really felt like I belonged. I always thought that sports was the equalizer for me. Didn't matter what you looked like or where you came from. If you were good at sports, you were good.
SPEAKER_10: And Dan was good. He became a star athlete in high school, landed a scholarship at the University of Idaho, and there started to compete in the decathlon. And in his senior year, 1988, he first crossed paths with Dave Johnson, a few years older and already well established on the scene. You know, Dave was the best American up until that point.
SPEAKER_10: But Dan's star was rising quickly, and others in the tight knit track community were starting to notice.
SPEAKER_01: I'm Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the world's greatest female athlete.
SPEAKER_10: Jackie Joyner-Kersee can say that even now, thanks to her six Olympic medals and the heptathlon world record she set in 1988 that still stands today. When you see this young talent, it's just a matter of time. They're going to have this big breakthrough.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's interesting. Jackie Joyner-Kersee made the comment that I could be the next Bruce Jenner.
SPEAKER_15: And that was what I was striving to do, you know, most of my career. He was the hero that we all needed in 1976, and he was the golden boy. And Dan was that very explosive athlete. I mean, he was just this young kid, very raw, you know, very talkative.
SPEAKER_01: And he had a personality that could pull people to him.
SPEAKER_03: We're a perfect combination. I think he and I were a great duo that was meant to be where we were going to push each other to the levels that we ended up going to. And by the time the 1992 Barcelona Olympics had come into view, Dan and Dave had pushed each other to the top of the global stage.
SPEAKER_10: Dan won the decathlon at the World Track and Field Championships. Dave won the decathlon at the Goodwill Games.
SPEAKER_01: You know, usually the multi-events are dominated by the Europeans. And finally in America, it's the breakthrough. And now all of a sudden it's like, wow, you start seeing this young talent put it all together.
SPEAKER_10: And among the observers who took notice were the executives at Reebok. Your mom's apparel company was on the hunt for athletes to get into business with. Dan and Dave, two dominant competitors but unknown personalities, were the perfect fit.
SPEAKER_01: Here are two athletes putting our sport in the limelight to have that commercial showing during the Super Bowl was wow. And we kind of looked at each other like, wow, you know.
SPEAKER_03: These two young little decathletes were getting a lot of attention and it's about time track and field athletes got that. The decathlon? Really? Us? This is unheard of.
SPEAKER_03: I can't believe they're asking us to do this. This is what Jordan does, Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson, all the best basketball and football guys do.
SPEAKER_10: With Dan and Dave, Reebok was looking to promote their new cross trainer to the masses, a shoe designed for use across multiple sports and workouts. The greatest athlete at the time was Bo Jackson and he played two sports.
SPEAKER_15: Bo knew everything Nike's campaign went, but the truth was Dan and Dave were more equipped to back up that claim.
SPEAKER_10: So when I look at Bo Jackson, he's a great baseball player, he's a great football player, but you know what?
SPEAKER_15: I thought I was the world's greatest athlete because I could do 10 events.
SPEAKER_10: And that thought played right into the case Reebok was trying to make as they rolled out more and more ads after the Super Bowl. Hi, world's greatest athlete here to talk to you about Reebok's new running cross trainer. Hi, world's greatest athlete here to talk to you.
SPEAKER_14: Hey, excuse me, Reebok asked me to talk about the new running cross trainer. No, no, no, this is my commercial. It's mine. Mine. Mine. The boldness of Reebok to come out with two people was really incredible.
SPEAKER_13: Introducing the new running cross trainer, the official shoe of the world's greatest athletes.
SPEAKER_09: The public likes me better. I'm better looking.
SPEAKER_13: My name is Steve Miller and at the time of Dan and Dave, I was the head of U.S. sports marketing for Nike. And we became very aware of the fact that Reebok was onto something very special. What you're looking for as a consumer is somebody who does something that you can't do or something you aspire to do or somebody who inspires you. And Dan and Dave caught the eye and the ear of consumers throughout the country and globally as well. Running cross trainer. Running cross trainer. Each time that Reebok ran the commercial and revised it and upgraded it, you became more affectionate towards the two athletes.
SPEAKER_16: And so people picked their favorites.
SPEAKER_09: Who is the world's greatest athlete? Dan or Dave? Dan's mom. Dan. Dave's mom. Dave. Dan's dentist. Dan. Dave's mailman. Dave. Dan's girlfriend. Dan. Dave's wife. Dave. Dan's ex-girlfriend.
SPEAKER_16: Definitely Dave. To be settled in Barcelona.
SPEAKER_10: Reebok had a hit on their hands.
SPEAKER_15: I remember being in meetings and Reebok was just talking. We're going to compete with Nike. We're finally getting there.
SPEAKER_10: Reebok had filmed dozens of commercials to air during the spring. And while Dan and Dave had already known each other as rivals, the filming brought them closer together as friends. We were competing against each other to be better actors, but we were both not very good.
SPEAKER_03: And I think we both kind of knew that. And there was plenty of downtime to bond on the set.
SPEAKER_10: I couldn't believe for a 30 second commercial. It's setting up cameras and all kinds of stuff.
SPEAKER_03: It would take two days of 12 hour a day shooting. You just sit around. To shoot 30 seconds. Finally they call for you and you do an hour's worth of work.
SPEAKER_15: And Dave and I looked at each other a couple times and we said, I can't believe what a waste of time this is. Dan wears Reebok. By late February, Dan and Dave were on talk shows.
SPEAKER_10: Dan and Dave were giving joint press conferences. Dan and Dave were being profiled on local morning TV. Dave and I got to shoot a commercial with Sinbad the comedian.
SPEAKER_15: He was the most incredible guy because he was so chill off camera, but then when the lights are on, he went crazy. Hey everybody, I'm Sinbad. I'm here with Dan and Dave and we're playing basketball today. And I think at the end of the day, my stomach hurt because I was laughing so hard. And Sinbad was maybe the worst athlete I had ever seen.
SPEAKER_03: Here I was, one of the top five sports celebrity figures in the US. Everybody knew who Dan and Dave was. I remember Dan and I were just going, what do we do with this?
SPEAKER_15: Well, an athlete's life is pretty simple. You get up, you train, you eat, you go to bed, and you just repeat that cycle each and every day. When the Dan and Dave campaign was going on, you know, my life got complicated.
SPEAKER_03: I couldn't go anywhere. I mean, there was nothing I couldn't. I'd go to an outhouse and come out and there was a camera there to see if I washed my hands, I guess. And that's what I wasn't prepared for, is to understand that, you know what, I just wasn't another face in the crowd.
SPEAKER_15: It got to a point where I told my manager, we can't do this anymore. We just stopped appearances.
SPEAKER_03: We've got to get this thing going. I mean, I've got like four months up until the trials. The trials.
SPEAKER_10: The first Dan and Dave ads aired at the Super Bowl in January of 1992. The Olympics were in Barcelona in July.
SPEAKER_09: To be settled in Barcelona.
SPEAKER_15: When Reebok approached Dave and I, the first thing both of us said was, you know, neither one of us are on this team yet. We still have to go through the Olympic trials.
SPEAKER_05: Hello, everyone, and welcome to New Orleans at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials.
SPEAKER_10: In 1992, the United States Olympic track and field trials were held at Tad Gormley Stadium in New Orleans the last week of June. I arrived in New Orleans, and I think the first thing that I noticed as soon as I got off the plane was it was hot.
SPEAKER_15: The heat was blistering.
SPEAKER_03: Upper 90s with 99 percent humidity or something like that. Whew! Like nothing I'd ever experienced before.
SPEAKER_01: Everywhere you went, Dan and Dave, Dan and Dave, Dan and Dave, all eyes are on who is going to represent the United States and who would go on and win the gold medal. You have the pressure a little bit for me with Reebok, and the money they'd spent, I'd better make this Olympic team, was in my mind because everybody's wanting to know who's better.
SPEAKER_03: We've got to see who wins in Barcelona. That's the commercial.
SPEAKER_10: Meanwhile, the trials were Reebok's last big marketing event before Barcelona, and the company took full advantage. I noticed everybody was wearing these white t-shirts.
SPEAKER_15: And hats that either had Dan or Dave on it.
SPEAKER_03: They either had a red Dan and blue Daves.
SPEAKER_03: And when you get into the stadium, everybody's wearing the t-shirts.
SPEAKER_15: And it was almost like somebody dropped them from a helicopter to all the people in the stands. At least half the people in the stands were wearing these white t-shirts. The top three finishers in the New Orleans decathlon would qualify for the Olympics.
SPEAKER_10: And the first day of events, a Saturday, went according to script, with Dan and Dave both racking up tons of points. Dave, as usual, was solid, while Dan, the reigning world champion, shot into first place.
SPEAKER_15: Somebody was telling me that I was ahead of world record pace, so that made me feel pretty good. Dan was on fire.
SPEAKER_10: If there were any concerns for either of them, it was a lingering foot injury for Dave. But he was the best second-day decathlete of all time. And the headlines leading into Sunday were all about whether or not he could catch up to his arch-rival.
SPEAKER_05: They've dominated the airwaves. Now their battle really begins. Dan O'Brien and Dave Johnson. Who will win the decathlon? Over the first two events of the second day, hurdles and discus, Dave started to close the gap.
SPEAKER_10: And then... Sure enough, we got to the pole vault.
SPEAKER_15: The pole vault. The most stressful time, I think, for a decathlete or the coaches is the start of the pole vault decathlon. Any coach will tell you, that's where they're the most worried.
SPEAKER_10: In the pole vault, competitors aim to clear increasing heights one by one. The higher the bar, the more points received. Each vaulter gets three attempts on a given height. And each can choose whatever height they'd like to start at. But if they fail to clear the bar at the first height, they get no points. To start earning relatively high points immediately, Dan and Dave made the same aggressive choice. To begin their vault at 15 feet 9 inches.
SPEAKER_03: The higher vaulters, it takes a while to get to your turn to vault at your starting height. So you warm up and they might give you a few other warm-ups, but it's never enough. It's the eighth event. You're feeling your legs a little bit.
SPEAKER_15: And the sun was really starting to get hot. While we're sitting around, the cameras are in our faces.
SPEAKER_03: They're following us wherever we go. And I remember just thinking how distracting that was. Well, by the time the warm-ups ended, it was almost two solid hours till I took my first jump.
SPEAKER_03: I vaulted first. I remember that. And so I made my first height and had no problem with it, other than my foot was still getting more and more sore. Sat down and, you know, was battling the heat again. And I remember seeing his first attempt at that same height. You know, once they call my name, I kind of look down the runway, kind of assess the wind, look over at the coach.
SPEAKER_15: He gives me a thumbs up. All I remember is putting my hands up way too late. And so literally I just went straight up and straight down with hardly any bend in the pole.
SPEAKER_03: He looked like he'd never vaulted before. Something was way wrong than I'd ever seen him have.
SPEAKER_15: And so on my next attempt, I make all the adjustments. Come down the runway. Good takeoff. Good plant. I feel like I'm way over the bar. And I come down on it slightly. And the bar falls off. And then I start to think, it's like, oh no. I'm on a third attempt. You don't want to be on a third attempt. At an opening bar. At an Olympic trials.
SPEAKER_05: This height, that's it. Or he has lost maybe all chance. He had been on a world record pace and now risking not even qualifying for the team.
SPEAKER_03: That's when I sat up and I was going, well, what is going on here? And it was kind of a, there was kind of a quiet in the stands. There wasn't as much Dan, Dave, Dan, Dave, Dan, Dave.
SPEAKER_15: You kind of see the crowd begin to stir a little bit. Other athletes sit up and they look over your direction. Ooh, Brian's got two misses. This is opening bar. Is that his opener? Oh, did he make one? No, I thought I saw him make one. Then you hear the people talking in the crowd as well. It's like, no, no, he made one. I saw him make one about an hour ago. No, that was a warm up.
SPEAKER_03: This third attempt, he might have taken a little run and then stopped and went back. This is his third and final attempt and he goes down the runway and stops.
SPEAKER_06: As soon as I start my run on the third attempt, I get a big gust of wind coming from the right.
SPEAKER_15: And so I stop.
SPEAKER_03: He just didn't look confident.
SPEAKER_06: This is it. He's not on the team if he doesn't make this height and he knows it and it's going through his mind.
SPEAKER_15: I just tell myself, settle down, just relax, just relax. And so I get back there and I take off and down the runway I go. There's a look on his face like, I'm just going to go and I'll make sure I make it.
SPEAKER_03: And I feel pretty good.
SPEAKER_15: I plant the pole. The next thing you know, I'm stalled out on the top and I'm looking at the bar and I think, get over it somehow. And I can't.
SPEAKER_06: I come crashing down to the pit and I'm just in a daze.
SPEAKER_11: What happened? What happened? And at that moment, I wanted to turn to somebody and say, help me.
SPEAKER_15: It was almost as if the sun, all that heat, that it became cloudy and it became dark.
SPEAKER_01: Because you knew something bad had happened. I blew a chance to go to the Olympic Games. I'm not on this Olympic team.
SPEAKER_15: It was devastating. I was devastated.
SPEAKER_01: I just tried to get away from people.
SPEAKER_15: But there's guys with cameras, there's people and so I cried that I didn't make the team. I cried that I let everybody down. I was kind of in a daze, just kind of freaked out by all of it. The thought never ever crossed my mind that day in nor day we're not make that Olympic team.
SPEAKER_01: And that just wasn't a fault. My main goal is to win an Olympic gold medal here.
SPEAKER_15: And that was what my coaches and I thought all along. And we were so not ready for it. We were not ready to fail. To not make this team, to not win this meet. It was hard. Everybody was still in disbelief. You could hear the buzz in the stands.
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. You are the best athlete in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And I knew it was hard to deal with dealing with all the commercials and all the hype and everything that went into it. It was too much. It was a lot to have to deal with all at once.
SPEAKER_03: And the first thing I thought about is, you got to get to him and tell him it's going to be okay.
SPEAKER_01: Because I cared about him as a person. You know we were Dan and Dave singular.
SPEAKER_03: And everywhere we went we had to be that person. It was one of those things where, dang, the perfect situation wasn't happening. The exact thing that would have been what everybody wanted to see wasn't going to happen. Suddenly I was alone. Dave Johnson, now all alone. No more Dan and Dave. Dave Johnson.
SPEAKER_05: You know I was able to become Dave again. The real Dave, not the Dave Reebok. Johnson in the javelin competition.
SPEAKER_03: No-see's thrown a beauty right here. It turns out to be an American record of 244.
SPEAKER_08: Dave places first in the overall competition. Meanwhile Dan fails to qualify and they share an emotional embrace when it was over.
SPEAKER_07: Dave came over and said, I love you man. I love you man. You're going to be alright.
SPEAKER_15: I just decided he needed a hug. Gave him a big hug and just said, I'm so sorry that that happened.
SPEAKER_03: And I just, I couldn't even hug him back. You know, I just didn't want to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_15: I couldn't even hug him back. You know, it was just kind of hands on my side. It's just like, what the heck just happened? For the next 48 hours I walked around in a daze and I didn't think much about Dan and Dave. Some people asked me, well what's Reebok going to do? And at the time I thought, I don't care. But I got the real sense that, you know, somebody was getting yelled at somewhere. There was probably some yelling going on at the ad agency.
SPEAKER_10: Rick Siddig was watching the events that afternoon on television from New York. So it's a bad situation. The mood at the agency is just, oh crap.
SPEAKER_16: Reebok has made a huge investment in these athletes to pump up their credibility in the athletic world. And they've got media to fill and the future of the company is kind of resting on the outcome of this. And it's now just gone to hell. And in my head I'm going, oh no. We were planning to be on Johnny Carson.
SPEAKER_03: We were planning to be hosting Saturday Night Live. All those commercials they'd already made. They'd made 10 or 15 commercials that were going to play during the Olympic Games with Dan and Dave there.
SPEAKER_10: Steve Miller from Nike was in New Orleans with a few of his colleagues in a small section of seats in the middle of the stands watching the drama play out. Sitting in the stands and watching it was, you know, was like a dream come true.
SPEAKER_13: For months, Steve and Nike had been secretly fantasizing this exact scenario.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah, we were actively hoping that something bad would happen. I don't know how else to put it.
SPEAKER_13: I'd like to lie and say, no, it didn't make a difference, but it made a difference, of course. The truth is, we were just f***ing happy. What are you going to say? It was one of those moments where you feel so good, you get a little lightheaded. It's the first moment in time that I can ever remember taking pleasure in somebody else's baby.
SPEAKER_08: Reebok, the creator of those Dan and Dave commercials, says that its huge ad campaign isn't dead yet. It just needs a slight readjustment. The readjustment came in the form of a new series of ads, embracing the change in the Dan and Dave story.
SPEAKER_10: Reebok rebooted its campaign on the fly. They had new ads out within 48 hours. In the coming weeks, there was an ad with Dan coaching Dave. Now that I've got some free time, I'm helping Dave train. Faster, Dave! Push it!
SPEAKER_14: One with Dave consoling Dan.
SPEAKER_10: Hey, you should be happy. You're going to represent your country. You're going for the gold.
SPEAKER_14: Yeah, I guess. I just wish you were going, Dan.
SPEAKER_10: And that same ad also announced a new role for Dan O'Brien in Barcelona. Dave, I am going.
SPEAKER_14: Huh? I'll be up in the broadcast booth. You mean we'll both be in Barcelona?
SPEAKER_15: Uh huh. Together again? Uh huh.
SPEAKER_12: Really?
SPEAKER_14: You want a hug?
SPEAKER_14: Nah, we already did that.
SPEAKER_11: Okay, the decathlon resumed this morning at Olympic Stadium. American Dave Johnson expected to contend for the gold medal.
SPEAKER_04: When you're in the broadcast booth, it's really hard not to put yourself out there on the track.
SPEAKER_04: Here are Dwight Stones and the guy who might have been Johnson's toughest competition at the Olympics, Dan O'Brien.
SPEAKER_15: It was a little strange looking down there at guys who I thought I could beat for the Olympic gold medal. Yeah, it's just really too bad. You always hate for it to come down to your third attempt.
SPEAKER_14: There were moments when I wasn't horribly complimentary to Dave.
SPEAKER_15: Well, Dwight, it looks to me like Dave has just lacked enthusiasm all day long.
SPEAKER_15: And I just saw him struggling. And I kept thinking, this isn't the Dave Johnson that I saw all spring. This isn't the Dave Johnson that I saw at the Olympic trials. And I thought, you know, golly, is he crumbling under the pressure. Dave was underperforming, but not because of the pressure. His foot injury from the trials had only gotten worse.
SPEAKER_10: The public didn't know about it, but a few weeks before the games, Dave had met with a doctor about his foot.
SPEAKER_03: The doctor said, you can't go. You shouldn't go to the Olympics. And because it's going to break in half. And I'm, wait a minute, I'm the Dave guy from the Reebok commercials. And Dan didn't make the team, didn't you see? Somebody's got to go. In Barcelona, on a broken foot, starting day two in ninth place, Dave toughed it out and finished third.
SPEAKER_10: Dave Johnson becomes the first U.S. medalist in the event since Bruce Jenner back in 1976.
SPEAKER_15: You know, he did his absolute best, which was phenomenal, to walk away with a bronze medal. Even as I stepped up and received the bronze medal, you know, and saw the American flag go up, I was thinking, man, I'd overcome, you know, this Dan and Dave ad campaign,
SPEAKER_03: and the broken foot, and just the career of 14, 15 years of training. And I was so fortunate to be able to step down from that medals ceremony and go to the people that really knew me, my family, my coach, and the people that really were there in my life to get me to that moment.
SPEAKER_15: Dave wins the bronze medal. Robert Smelik comes home with the gold from the Czech Republic. Neither Dave nor I claim the title of the world's greatest athlete in Barcelona. And I think it was two or three days later in USA Today, Reebok has a big ad that says congratulations to Dave Johnson for winning the Olympic bronze medal. Thank you, Dan and Dave, for a great year. And I think for me at that particular moment, Dan and Dave ended.
SPEAKER_10: Dan and Dave was over as an ad campaign, and with Dave coming off a major injury, Dan and Dave looked to be over as a major rivalry too.
SPEAKER_10: But Dan O'Brien was already thinking about what was next.
SPEAKER_15: All I could do was really think about what was down the road for me. And the great thing about track and field is you don't have to wait every four years for a big event. I knew I was going to get another shot the following year at a world championship. Starting in the fall of 1992, just a few weeks after the Barcelona games, and for the next few years, Dan O'Brien went on the best tear of his life.
SPEAKER_10: September that same year, I break the world record. The winter of 1993, I win the first heptathlon world indoor championships, I break the world record.
SPEAKER_15: I win a US outdoor title in Eugene, Oregon, score over 8,800, go on to defend my world title in Stuttgart, Germany. Win a third world outdoor title in Gothenburg, Sweden.
SPEAKER_10: But no one cared.
SPEAKER_15: I remember eating lunch with Bruce Jenner, and Bruce kept telling me, only thing people are going to remember is the Olympic Games. And I thought to myself, man, this guy's crazy. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He didn't have world championships when he was a competing athlete. I get to compete at world championships every two years. But it wasn't until later that I realized, man, Bruce was right.
SPEAKER_10: So Dan O'Brien set his sights on the next Olympics and the chance to win a medal people would care about. But even as he was winning meet after meet, Dan felt he needed help because he was still struggling with the mental side of the decathlon. I used to get so nervous before I competed that I would question why I do this, almost throwing up, wanting to quit.
SPEAKER_12: My name is Dr. Jim Reardon. I'm a sports psychologist from Columbus, Ohio.
SPEAKER_10: Dan had come to Dr. Reardon to talk about that anxiety he faced before every competition. But Dr. Reardon suspected there was a deeper element at play. The fallout from the missed pole vault in New Orleans.
SPEAKER_12: What can happen is people come in for treatment from trauma, and the first thing the therapist wants to talk about is the trauma. And the last thing the person wants to talk about is the trauma. I just made the decision pretty early on, if he brings it up and wants to talk about it, we'll talk about it. But if he doesn't, then we won't because he'll know when the time will be right. And so we didn't.
SPEAKER_10: For almost three years, the pole vault miss didn't come up. They talked about other parts of the decathlon, their personal lives, the real world, but never New Orleans. Until one day in August 1995, 311 days until the next Olympic trials.
SPEAKER_12: We were having this conversation and he kind of started it out by saying, gosh, you know what, last night was weird. I had a dream about the pole vault from 1992. He said, I haven't thought about that in years. And I'm thinking to myself, OK, I guess this is the moment.
SPEAKER_10: Over the coming months, Reardon decided that he had to take a big aggressive step. Dan had to watch footage of his failure in New Orleans.
SPEAKER_12: Somebody got me a copy of it and I had a couple of, back in those days, DVDs made. I kind of caught him off guard and I said, I got something I want you to look at. And we watched it. He's watching it and I'm watching him.
SPEAKER_15: It was ghastly. It brought back all the feelings that I had in 1992. I remembered seeing the white T-shirts, Dan or Dave T-shirts in the crowd. I remember what side of the field I was on and how hot it was. Oh, my gosh, it was hot.
SPEAKER_12: And I remember thinking to myself, holy mackerel.
SPEAKER_15: I relived the horror of missing on a third attempt. And coming down, landing on the pit and just being in a complete daze. And it was absolutely ghastly to go through those emotions again.
SPEAKER_15: The video continued to roll. It showed Dave come over to hug me. I couldn't I couldn't I didn't even know what to say afterwards.
SPEAKER_12: And I said, what do you think? And he said, I don't want to look at this. And I said, OK. And then I replayed it. And I said, what do you think? And he said, I said, I feel like I feel like throwing up. And I said, I said, you know what? I would much rather have you feel like that in a hotel room in Chula Vista in December than on the runway in Atlanta in June. I wanted him to get to the point where he would have seen that video so many times that he would just get pissed off when he would think about it. And develop the mindset that pressure is nothing. Pressure is going to bring out the best in me.
SPEAKER_04: It's a trials doubleheader today, folks. Hello, I'm Bob Costas. We have competition from Brackenfield here at the Olympic Stadium in Atlanta. And from the trials for the 1996 Olympics were held in Atlanta, which would be the site of the games themselves later that summer.
SPEAKER_10: And once again, the decathlon competition featured two familiar faces, Dan O'Brien and Dave Johnson. But no one was talking about Dan and Dave in 1996. No Reebok campaign. In fact, Dan was a Nike athlete by this point. And Dave was living the typical battle of the injured athlete. One problem piling up on top of another. These trials were not about who would be the world's greatest athlete, Dan or Dave. The storyline was all Dan O'Brien. I would say that the 1992 Olympic trials debacle by Dan O'Brien is a part of track and field lore and legend at this point.
SPEAKER_06: I was nervous going into the 96 trials. I'll be honest with you.
SPEAKER_15: I can remember waking up the morning that the decathlon started. I put my head in my wife's lap and just sobbed because I was nervous and I was scared, you know. But I needed to get that out.
SPEAKER_06: I think every decathlete who competes now is affected by his no height in the pole vault four years ago. I would submit that this will be the hardest track meet that Dan O'Brien will ever compete in. Even if Dan had felt like he'd put 1992 behind him, the organizers in Atlanta wouldn't let him shake it so easily.
SPEAKER_10: I'll never forget as I walked out to run the 100 meters, the start of the very first day at the Atlanta Olympic trials,
SPEAKER_15: I look up at the big screen on the north end of the side of the field and they're showing my failure in the pole vault.
SPEAKER_12: When I saw that footage, I was pissed off. I don't even know to this day whose idea it was. It really didn't upset me that I saw the video. I kind of almost chuckled. I laughed it off.
SPEAKER_15: Because of the training that Dan had done, it became just nothing.
SPEAKER_15: I was ready.
SPEAKER_10: Proving he was ready, Dan got off to a great start. Going into day two, he was in second place and he'd remain there through the hurdles and the discus.
SPEAKER_05: And with seven of the ten events complete, next, the dreaded pole vault. What must be going through his mind?
SPEAKER_15: I get a little nervous and, you know, just I'm tired of sitting around. Twenty minutes has gone by, maybe a half hour since I took my last warm up jump.
SPEAKER_10: Dan was cooling off and just like in 1992, he was losing his rhythm. So he made a last minute decision to change his strategy. Two bars before I'm supposed to come in, I get a little antsy.
SPEAKER_15: And I walked over to my coach Rick Sloen and I said, what do you think about me coming in at the next bar? It was a scheduled bar lower than I was supposed to come in and he's just like, you feel good? Go for it. Do it. I didn't tell anybody else. Looked at my coach and all of a sudden I took my sweats off and I step up to the runway and they say, O'Brien, up. And I think that surprised even my competitors at the time.
SPEAKER_06: Well, Tom, they made one intelligent decision. They're starting at a height one foot below what Dan started at four years ago. And everyone in the stadium holding their collective breath.
SPEAKER_15: I'm on the runway. I got my starter pole. Don't even think about missing. Just think, you know what? I'm here to vault, head down the runway and think to myself, look, I'm probably not as warmed up as I should be. I push a little harder than than I than I normally would on a first attempt jump. As I take off the ground, my top hand slips about an inch and I regrip real quick. Swing up, go over the bar and I got a first attempt. That's kind of like hitting the lottery. And by virtue of that first attempt, make I'm on the team.
SPEAKER_04: Here is the sweet irony for O'Brien. It looks like Dan O'Brien is going to gain the lead in the decathlon because of his performance here in the pole vault. The event that was his undoing four years ago. Now, also a few hours later, Dan would finish first in the trials decathlon, a stark contrast to four years earlier.
SPEAKER_10: In 1992, it had been Dave Johnson watching Dan struggle. This time the roles were reversed.
SPEAKER_03: I ended up placing sixth and pretty much knew it. That was my retirement after that event, after that Olympic trials. And, you know, I just remember just being able to encourage Dan to go on in Atlanta and represent the United States. And here comes Dan O'Brien. Let's let the crowd carry him home here.
SPEAKER_05: He is finally going to make a U.S. Olympic team.
SPEAKER_10: Dan O'Brien was world champion, record holder. He'd exercised the demons of New Orleans. Now the only job left to do was to win the gold six weeks later.
SPEAKER_15: The trouble is when you've won everything except for the Olympic gold medal and you feel like it's the last thing on your list. It's not as exciting as it could be. It was stressful. I was trying to just not make mistakes.
SPEAKER_05: Atlanta's Olympic Stadium, where the decathlon competition continued today. And for a report on day two in the decathlon, let's go to Dwight Stones.
SPEAKER_10: In Atlanta, in his quest to finally settle that question, who is the world's greatest athlete that had first been asked four years earlier? Dan O'Brien's first day of competition went off without a hitch. As prepared as I was for the Olympic Games, sometimes what you're not prepared for is what other people are going to do.
SPEAKER_15: This crazy young guy from Germany, Frank Bussmann, just young kid, he had personal best after personal best. He was going crazy.
SPEAKER_10: So on this new stage, Dan suddenly had a new rival. Bussmann, the German, was right on his heels through day one, through the pole vault and right up to the decathlon's final two events, the javelin and the 1500 meters, a race that had never been Dan's strongest. I need a big lead before the 1500 meters.
SPEAKER_15: And when I got to the javelin, I didn't have as big a lead as I would have liked. He was a little too close for comfort.
SPEAKER_04: Let's head back to the track. The two day decathlon concluding tonight with a report on how the competition...
SPEAKER_15: And so as I got into the javelin, it was the twilight of the night.
SPEAKER_10: The Olympic Stadium was packed with hometown American fans rooting on Dan and a noisy contingent of Germans rooting on Bussmann. Each of the competitors selected a javelin and took their first throw. Dan's first attempt was disappointing, but he tried to stay calm, scanning the crowd as he waited his next turn. I look over and see a guy in a red, white and blue jersey, USA jersey, and it's Dave Johnson.
SPEAKER_15: He's got his Oakleys on the back of his head backwards like he always used to wear them. And he was down in the front row, you know, just kind of hanging.
SPEAKER_10: Dave had been standing with the U.S. coaches, quietly watching the drama play out. But now he was noticing something.
SPEAKER_03: As Dan threw his first throw, I think I could tell the javelin he was throwing wasn't flying exactly as well as it should be for his type of throwing.
SPEAKER_10: After the second throw, another disappointment, Dan came over to consult with his coaches on the sidelines, with Dave standing right nearby.
SPEAKER_03: We had that eye contact.
SPEAKER_15: And I say to Dave, which javelin should I use? You've got 100 to choose from out there.
SPEAKER_03: I had him pick out the javelin that I knew would work really well, you know, because javelin is just my best event.
SPEAKER_15: Dave said, the 90-meter Nemeth. And I knew exactly which javelin he was talking about. And I said, all right. Something about him being there, it put me at ease. It was just refreshing to my soul. I just felt good that he was going to be there to witness my greatest moment.
SPEAKER_06: Dano stepped up to the line for his third throw. Needs a cushion for the 1,500.
SPEAKER_07: He unleashed a five-and-a-half personal best.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe in my mind I might have stepped out of myself and went out into his body a little bit. And I got to be Dan for about 20 seconds and help him throw that thing.
SPEAKER_14: Oh, I needed that one.
SPEAKER_06: True words were never spoken. Dan O'Brien is on the brink.
SPEAKER_15: I threw farther than Frank Bussmann, so I didn't give up any points. I didn't give up any ground. This is what it's all about. Dan O'Brien is on the brink of the gold.
SPEAKER_15: I'm going to win an Olympic gold medal.
SPEAKER_05: Dan O'Brien showing the courage of a world champion and an Olympic champion is picking it up. When Dan won a gold medal in 1996, I was just glad that it came full circle for him.
SPEAKER_01: Being able to go through but stick through and not give up on the sport. And it was great to see him finally being an Olympic champion. And Dan O'Brien takes the title of world's greatest athlete.
SPEAKER_15: I think it would be tough to talk about Dan and Dave if I hadn't come back in 1996 and won the gold. But I think failing in 1992 gave me an opportunity to rewrite the narrative. I had to change people's minds every time I stepped out onto the track.
SPEAKER_03: People, when they think of Dan and Dave, they remember something went wrong. Reebok, they had this big campaign that we both were going to be at the Olympics in. And then only one of us went, so it was a failure because of that. But the reality of that situation is the campaign was a huge success. They sold more shoes of that particular running cross trainer shoe than any other shoe throughout the year and a half that they were promoting it. That whole year was such a great experience except for two hours on the second day in the eighth event of the decathlon.
SPEAKER_15: I meet people who say, I remember where I was when you didn't make that third attempt in the pole vault. They have where were they stories when Dan O'Brien didn't make the Olympic team. And I think that's just in our human nature. We are just programmed to remember the bad times a little bit better than the good times. People remember the field goal that was missed. People remember the free throws that the guy didn't make. Nothing prepares you for really having your dream just kind of slip out from underneath you. But a personality, a great performance can change an athlete's life.
SPEAKER_09: To be settled in Barcelona.
SPEAKER_02: The Trials of Dan and Dave was hosted and produced by Jody Evergan with reporting by Andrew Mambo, sound design and original scoring by Ryan Ross Smith. Julia Lowry Henderson, Rose Eveleth, Taylor Barfield and Kate McAuliffe are the other producers at 30 for 30 podcasts. You can find the series on Apple podcasts or at 30 for 30 podcast dot com. The first season is five documentaries. The latest one just came out this week. It's a story about a huge casino caper or the world's most famous poker player and his mysterious accomplice won millions of dollars using a flaw in the design of certain playing cards. Check it out. Ninety nine percent invisible as a project of radio topia and KALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown. The International Rescue Committee works in more than 40 countries to serve people whose lives have been upended by conflict and disaster. Over one hundred and ten million people are displaced around the world. And the IRS urgently needs your help to meet this unprecedented need. The IRS aims to respond within 72 hours after an emergency strikes and they stay as long as they are needed. Some of the IRS is most important work is addressing the inequalities facing women and girls, ensuring safety from harm, improving health outcomes, increasing access to education, improving economic well-being and ensuring women and girls have the power to influence decisions that affect their lives. Generous people around the world give to the IRS to help families affected by humanitarian crises with emergency supplies. Your generous donation will give the IRS a steady, reliable support, allowing them to continue their ongoing humanitarian efforts even as they respond to emergencies. Donate today by visiting rescue dot org slash rebuild. Donate now and help refugee families in need. If you want to give your body the nutrients it craves and the energy it needs, there's kachava. It's a plant based super blend made up of super foods, greens, proteins, omegas, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and probiotics. In other words, it's all your daily nutrients in a glass. Some folks choose to take it as the foundation of a healthy breakfast or lunch, while others lean on it as a delicious protein packed snack to curb cravings and reduce grazing. If you're in a hurry, you can just add two scoops of kachava super blend to ice water or your favorite milk or milk alternative and just get going. But I personally like to blend it with greens and fruit and ice. You know, treat yourself nice. Take a minute and treat yourself right. You'll get all the stuff that you need and feel great. Kachava is offering 10 percent off for a limited time. Just go to kachava dot com slash invisible spelled K A C H A V A and get 10 percent off your first order. That's kachava dot com slash invisible kachava dot com slash invisible. Chances are you're listening to 99 percent invisible on your phone, probably while you're on the go. Think of all that you do on your phone the moment you leave your front door, whether it's looking up directions, scrolling social media or listening to your favorite podcast. It requires an amazing network. That's why you should switch to T-Mobile. T-Mobile covers more highway miles with 5G than anyone else and helps keep you connected with 5G from the driveway to the highway and the miles in between. Because your phone should just work where you are. It's your lifeline to pretty much everything you didn't bring with you. So next time you head out, whether you're taking a trip or going to work or just running errands, remember T-Mobile has got you covered. Find out more at T-Mobile dot com slash network and switch to the network that covers more highway miles with 5G than anyone else. Coverage is not available in some areas. See 5G details at T-Mobile dot com. Oakland, California.
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