The top three finishers in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics stand on the podium while wearing their medals at Olympic Stadium in Rome on Sept. 7, 1960. Rafer Johnson, center, won the gold; Taiwan’s Yang Chuan, left, the silver; and the Soviet Union’s Vasili Kuznetsov the bronze. Johnson, who won this decathlon and helped subdue Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin in 1968, died Wednesday. He was 86. (AP file photo)

He died at his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, according to family friend Michael Roth. No cause of death was announced.

Johnson was among the world’s greatest athletes from 1955 through his Olympic triumph in 1960, winning a national decathlon championship in 1956 and a silver medal at the Melbourne Olympics that same year.

His Olympic career included carrying the U.S. flag at the 1960 Games and lighting the torch at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to open the 1984 Games. Johnson set world records in the decathlon three times amid a fierce rivalry with his UCLA teammate C.K. Yang of Taiwan and Vasily Kuznetsov of the former Soviet Union.

Johnson won a gold medal at the Pan American Games in 1955 while competing in just his fourth decathlon.

Olympic Gold medalist and philanthropist Rafer Johnson lifts his arm to mimic the lighting of the Olympic torch, as he recalls the first Special Olympics World Games he attended, the first one ever held, at Chicago's Soldier Field in July 1968, during a news conference in Los Angeles on July 20, 2015. Johnson carried the American flag into the 1960 opening ceremonies in Rome as captain of the U.S. Olympic team and lit the flame to open the 1984 Olympics. (AP file photo)

On June 5, 1968, Johnson was working on Kennedy’s presidential campaign when the Democratic candidate was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Johnson joined former NFL star Rosey Grier and journalist George Plimpton in apprehending Sirhan Sirhan moments after he shot Kennedy, who died the next day.

“I knew he did everything he could to take care of Uncle Bobby at his most vulnerable moment,” Kennedy’s niece, Maria Shriver, said by phone. “His devotion to Uncle Bobby was pure and real. He had protected his friend. Even after Uncle Bobby’s death he stayed close.”

Johnson later called the assassination “one of the most devastating moments in my life.”

Born Rafer Lewis Johnson on Aug. 18, 1934, in Hillsboro, Texas, he moved to California in 1945 with his family, including his brother Jim, a future NFL Hall of Fame inductee. Although some sources cite Johnson’s birth year as 1935, the family has said that is incorrect.

They eventually settled in Kingsburg, near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley. It was less than 25 miles from Tulare, the hometown of Bob Mathias, who would win the decathlon at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics and prove an early inspiration to Johnson.

Johnson, Yang, and Kuznetzov had their way with the record books between the 1956 and 1960 Olympics.

At UCLA, Johnson played basketball for coach John Wooden, becoming a starter on the 1958-59 team. In 1958, he was elected student body president, the third Black to hold the office in school history.

Johnson retired from competition after the Rome Olympics. He began acting in movies, including appearances in “Wild in the Country” with Elvis Presley, “None But the Brave” with Frank Sinatra and the 1989 James Bond film “License to Kill.” He worked briefly as a TV sportscaster before becoming a vice president at Continental Telephone in 1971.

In 1984 Johnson lit the Olympic flame for the Los Angeles Games. He took the torch from Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Olympic great Jesse Owens, who ran it into the Coliseum.

“Standing there and looking out, I remember thinking ‘I wish I had a camera,'” Johnson said. “My hair was standing straight up on my arm. Words really seem inadequate.”