Superstars
Encyclopedia
Superstars is an all-around sports competition that pits elite athletes from different sports against one another in a series of athletic events resembling a decathlon
Decathlon
The decathlon is a combined event in athletics consisting of ten track and field events. The word decathlon is of Greek origin . Events are held over two consecutive days and the winners are determined by the combined performance in all. Performance is judged on a points system in each event, not...

.

On the original ABC version, an athlete could compete in up to seven events, but no athlete was permitted to compete in the sport(s) of his or her profession. In the World, International, European and British versions of the contest, athletes would compete in 8 out of 10 events, with no-one generally allowed to take part in their own sport, although some handicapping rules did apply.

The idea was developed by 1948 and 1952 Olympic
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

 figure skating champion Dick Button
Dick Button
Richard Totten "Dick" Button is an American former figure skater and a well-known long-time skating television analyst. He is a two-time Olympic Champion and five-time World Champion...

. He shopped the idea to all three U.S. television networks, and ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 bought it as a special for the winter of 1973. The first Superstars competition was held in Rotonda West, Florida in March 1973 and was won by pole vaulter Bob Seagren
Bob Seagren
Robert "Bob" Seagren was an American pole vaulter, the 1968 Olympic champion.A native of Pomona, California, Bob Seagren was one of the world's top pole vaulters in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He won six National AAU and four NCAA titles indoors and outdoors. Indoors he posted eight world...

. The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 covered the competition and aired their own programme, featuring British athletes on December 31, 1973, which was won by 400 metre hurdles Olympic champion David Hemery
David Hemery
David Peter Hemery, CBE, is a British former athlete, winner of the 400m hurdles at the 1968 Summer Olympics.He was born in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, but his father's work took the family to the United States, where he attended school and graduated from Boston University.Hemery's first...

. Television broadcasts of the competitions were popular both in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 in the 1970s and 1980s.

Competitors participate in ten different sporting events, including a 100 yard/100 metre dash, 800 metre (0.497098189319845 mi) run, obstacle course, weightlifting, bowling
Bowling
Bowling Bowling Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule...

, rowing
Rowing (sport)
Rowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on rivers, on lakes or on the ocean, depending upon the type of race and the discipline. The boats are propelled by the reaction forces on the oar blades as they are pushed against the water...

, tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

, basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

, bicycle racing
Bicycle racing
Bicycle racing is a competition sport in which various types of bicycles are used. There are several categories of bicycle racing including road bicycle racing, cyclo-cross, mountain bike racing, track cycling, BMX, bike trials, and cycle speedway. Bicycle racing is recognised as an Olympic sport...

, shooting
Shooting sports
A shooting sport is a competitive sport involving tests of proficiency using various types of guns such as firearms and airguns . Hunting is also a shooting sport, and indeed shooting live pigeons was an Olympic event...

 and swimming
Swimming (sport)
Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

. The sports used have varied over time and between the European and American competitions (for example, in the first USA competition, there was no obstacle course, but there was table tennis
Table tennis
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight, hollow ball back and forth using table tennis rackets. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net...

 and baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

), while the European versions featured a 600m Steeplechase
Steeplechase (athletics)
The steeplechase is an obstacle race in athletics, which derives its name from the steeplechase in horse racing.-Rules:The length of the race is usually 3000 m; junior events are 2000 m, as women's events formerly were. The circuit has four ordinary barriers and one water jump. Over 3000 m, each...

.

Points are awarded for the position in which the competitor places in each event. The competitor with the most points at the end of all ten events is declared the champion.

Canadian football player Brian Budd
Brian Budd
Brian Budd was a Canadian professional soccer player best known for winning the World Superstars competition three years in a row from 1978 to 1980. He was also a soccer sportscaster.-Early years:...

 was unbeaten in Superstars contests, winning the World Championship three times from 1978 to 1980, making him the most successful Superstar of all time.

1973 - Britain's Sporting Superstars

Originally aired in the USA by ABC in March 1973, Superstars was first broadcast in Britain on 31 December 1973 as "Britain's Sporting Superstars", closely following the American format. David Vine
David Vine
David Martin Vine was a British television sports presenter. He presented a wide variety of shows from the 1960s onwards.-Early life:...

, who was the main presenter of the BBC programme from 1973 to 1985, said "in 1972, Ron Pickering
Ron Pickering
Ronald James Pickering , was an athletics coach and BBC sports commentator. Born in Barking, Essex, he coached several Olympic athletes, including Lynn Davies, a Welsh Olympic Games gold medallist long jumper. He was also the first host of the BBC1 children's sports programme We Are the...

, myself, Don Revie
Don Revie
Donald George 'Don' Revie, OBE, , was an English footballer who played for Leicester City, Hull City, Sunderland, Manchester City and Leeds United as a deep-lying centre forward. After managing Leeds United he managed England from 1974 until 1977...

, Billy Bremner
Billy Bremner
William John "Billy" Bremner was a Scottish professional footballer, most noted for his captaincy of the Leeds United team of the 1960s and 1970s. He has since been voted Leeds United's greatest player of all time and has a statue outside the South East corner of Elland Road...

 and TV producer Barney Colehan
Barney Colehan
Barney Colehan was an English radio and television producer.Major Bernard Colehan arrived at the BBC from the British Forces Broadcasting Service. He first came to prominence in 1946 as a BBC radio producer responsible for Have A Go hosted by Wilfred Pickles...

 sat in a hotel in Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

 and formulated Superstars but the BBC dismissed the idea. Then Dick Button started it in the States and the BBC bought the rights".

Recorded at Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace National Sports Centre
The National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace in south London, England is a large sports centre and athletics stadium. It was opened in 1964 in Crystal Palace Park, close to the site of the former Crystal Palace, in the former parkland and also usurping part of the former grand prix circuit.It was...

 in August and promoted as a challenge between Britain's seven best sportsmen, the hard fought contest was won by the 1968 Olympic champion
Athletics at the 1968 Summer Olympics
At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, 36 athletics events were contested, 24 for men and 12 for women. There were a total number of 1031 participating athletes from 93 countries....

 in the 400m hurdles, David Hemery
David Hemery
David Peter Hemery, CBE, is a British former athlete, winner of the 400m hurdles at the 1968 Summer Olympics.He was born in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, but his father's work took the family to the United States, where he attended school and graduated from Boston University.Hemery's first...

, besting Jackie Stewart
Jackie Stewart
Sir John Young Stewart, OBE , better known as Jackie Stewart, and nicknamed The Flying Scotsman, is a Scottish former racing driver and team owner. He competed in Formula One between 1965 and 1973, winning three World Drivers' Championships. He also competed in Can-Am...

, Bobby Moore
Bobby Moore
Robert Frederick Chelsea "Bobby" Moore, OBE was an English footballer. He captained West Ham United for more than ten years and was captain of the England team that won the 1966 World Cup...

, Joe Bugner
Joe Bugner
József Kreul "Joe" Bugner is a Hungarian-born British-Australian former top heavyweight boxer. He holds triple nationality, being a citizen of Hungary and a naturalized citizen of both Australia and the United Kingdom where he learned to box and spent his peak years.Born in Szőreg, a southeastern...

, Roger Taylor, Tony Jacklin
Tony Jacklin
Anthony Jacklin CBE is an English golfer, who was the most successful British player of his generation. He was also the most successful European Ryder Cup captain ever.-Early life and education:...

 and Barry John
Barry John
Barry John is a former Welsh rugby union fly-half who played, during the amateur era of the sport, in the 1960s and early 1970s. John began his rugby career as a schoolboy playing for his local team Cefneithin RFC before switching to first-class west Wales team Llanelli RFC in 1964...

. Featuring the first ever gym test (devised by Pickering, and comprising circuit running, a medicine ball throw, parallel bar dips and squat thrusts) the event came down to the final steeplechase, where Hemery overcame a 100m handicap to pass Barry John with 60 metres left. Shown on New Year's Eve, the programme was a major success and was repeated the following year.

1974 to 1977 - European Superstars

In the second event in 1974, World Light-Heavyweight boxing champion John Conteh
John Conteh
John Conteh is a British former boxer who was world light-heavyweight boxing champion.Conteh is one of Britain's most successful boxing champions. At his peak in the mid to late 1970s he was considered good enough that he was touted as a possible opponent of Muhammad Ali...

 comfortably beat an ill Hemery and Colin Bell
Colin Bell
Colin Bell MBE , is a former English football player who was born in Hesleden, County Durham, England. Nicknamed "The King of the Kippax" , and Nijinsky after the famous racehorse , Bell is widely regarded as Manchester City's greatest ever player...

 to win the title, again at Crystal Palace. Conteh credited the highly competitive nature of the competition with increasing his abilities as a boxer, the inception of this cross-sport contest quickly encouraged many top athletes to push themselves further, introducing the idea that the winner could claim to be the country's "top sportsman" and also provided an arena where recently retired champions (such as Hemery and Lynn Davies
Lynn Davies
Lynn Davies CBE was a member of the Cardiff Amateur Athletic Club and captain of the British Olympic long jump team in 1964....

) could extend their careers.

Following the success of the first two standalone UK competitions, in 1975 the British national Superstars contest was suspended, and the event was widened to include participants from continental Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. Five preliminary heats were held, followed by a final at the Ahoy indoor arena in Rotterdam, famous for its banked, wooden cycling track. This proved to make Superstars a major hit, grabbing large audiences across the continent and paving the way for the International and World Superstars editions to follow.

Memorable events in the first year of European Superstars included Malcolm MacDonald
Malcolm MacDonald
Malcolm John MacDonald OM, PC was a British politician and diplomat.-Background:MacDonald was the son of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and Margaret MacDonald. Like his father he was born in Lossiemouth, Moray...

 winning the 100m sprint in a Superstars record time of 10.9 seconds (after being made to run the race twice following the false start of another competitor), David Hemery being beaten by Dutch field hockey player Ties Kruize
Ties Kruize
Ties Kruize is a former field hockey player from the Netherlands, who represented Holland at the Summer Olympics of 1972, 1976, and 1984...

 following a fall in the 600m Steeplechase
Steeplechase (athletics)
The steeplechase is an obstacle race in athletics, which derives its name from the steeplechase in horse racing.-Rules:The length of the race is usually 3000 m; junior events are 2000 m, as women's events formerly were. The circuit has four ordinary barriers and one water jump. Over 3000 m, each...

, Swedish Discus thrower Ricky Bruch
Ricky Bruch
Björn Rickard "Ricky" Bruch was a Swedish athlete and actor.Bruch was born in Örgryte, Gothenburg, grew up in Skåne, and was later a long-time resident of Malmö....

 setting records in the weight lifting and medicine ball throw section of the gym tests and the first appearance of pole vaulter Kjell Isaksson
Kjell Isaksson
Kjell Gunnar Isaksson is a retired pole vaulter from Sweden, who broke the world record several times in 1972. Initially he broke the record set by Christos Papanikolaou of Greece and San Jose State University two years earlier, by jumping 5.51 metres in Austin, Texas--the second man to clear 18...

, who dominated the final heat in Sweden, scoring a then record 69 (out of a possible 80) points.

Before the final in Rotterdam, Kruize was badly injured in a car accident and was replaced by Hemery, who would eventually finish second. Dominating the event again was Kjell Isaksson, who won four of his eight events and finished second or third in three others, winning the title with an event to spare.

The rules for European Superstars allowed athletes to compete in "near specialist" events with a handicap, meaning that both Hemery and Isaksson were allowed to run in the 100m and Steeplechase, but only after giving the other finalists a head start. In the final 600m Steeplechase event Hemery had to make up a 100m handicap on his rivals in order to finish in overall second, and valiantly did so, but only after again falling badly at the water jump. Hitting the ground hard while challenging Isaksson for the lead, Hemery rose with a grimace of pain on his face then sprinted for the line, grabbing third. However as soon as the race was over he collapsed, with the TV cameras showing huge swelling to his injured leg - he had run the last 100m with badly torn ankle ligaments.

In 1976 national competitions were resumed and Hemery again became UK Superstar, beating Conteh and Formula 1 World Champion James Hunt
James Hunt
James Simon Wallis Hunt was a British racing driver from England who won the Formula One World Championship in . Hunt's often action packed exploits on track earned him the nickname "Hunt the Shunt." After retiring from driving, Hunt became a media commentator and businessman...

 easily. By now Hemery was a "professional Superstar", competing in Britain, Europe and the USA, and devising his own training regime. His performances duly improved, and even though 1976 Olympic Judoka
Judo at the 1976 Summer Olympics
At the Judo competition at the 1976 Summer Olympics medals were awarded in 5 weight classes and in the open competition, and was restricted to male judoka only.-Medal summary:-Medal table:-References:*...

 David Starbrook
David Starbrook
David Colin Starbrook is a retired British judoka.He won a silver medal in the 1972 Olympics, and bronze in the 1976 Olympics - both in the half-heavyweight division....

 took his parallel bar dips record in the gym tests, Hemery was clearly Britain's top competitor.

This was not the case in Europe however, where Isaksson again beat Hemery in the Swedish heat of the competition - this time even more comfortably. Two of the highest profile heat winners - Bjorn Borg
Björn Borg
Björn Rune Borg is a former world no. 1 tennis player from Sweden. Between 1974 and 1981 he won 11 Grand Slam singles titles. He won five consecutive Wimbledon singles titles and six French Open singles titles...

 and Kevin Keegan
Kevin Keegan
Joseph Kevin Keegan, OBE is a former international footballer and former manager of the England national football team and several English clubs, most notably Newcastle United....

 - would not be able to compete in the Rotterdam final due to scheduling conflicts, and would never again appear in any Superstars contest. Keegan's victory produced the most memorable moment of the year, when he crashed violently during the cycle racing in his heat. With deep cuts and abrasions to his arm, shoulder and back, the Liverpool footballer was expected to withdraw, but with a large crowd present to watch him he famously said "These people here in the stands have come here to see me make a fool of myself and they've got a right to it!", got back on his bike and won the re-ride! Keegan then easily won the steeplechase to finish the heat a hero, but like many of the highest profile performers, his schedule was too full to allow him to compete as regularly as the Superstars format demanded. Partially because of this, less renowned athletes like Isaksson came to dominate and be recognised outside of their specialisms.

In the Ahoy final the sublime Isaksson won five events and finished 20 points ahead of his nearest rival. The top eight finishers were also guaranteed a place at the inaugural World Superstars competition, to be held in the USA the following year. With a new, more competitive era about to start, Isaksson was clearly Europe's top Superstar, though he would never again actually win a Superstars event.

1977 provided two new champions, with Isaksson taking part only in the World contest and David Hemery competing in American Superstars. In the UK national Superstars rower Tim Crooks
Tim Crooks
Timothy John Crooks is a former British rower who competed at the 1972 Summer Olympics and the 1976 Summer Olympics. He was seven times winner at Henley Royal Regatta and won the Wingfield Sculls three times....

 beat future World's Strongest Man
1983 World's Strongest Man
The 1983 World's Strongest Man was the 7th edition of World's Strongest Man and was won by Geoff Capes from the United Kingdom. It was his first title. Jon Pall Sigmarsson from the Iceland finished second, and Simon Wulfse from the Netherlands third. The contest was held at Christchurch, New...

 Geoff Capes
Geoff Capes
Geoffrey Lewis Capes is a former athlete, strongman and professional Highland Games competitor...

 in a tight contest, but he would fail to qualify for the European final, losing by one point to François Tracanelli
François Tracanelli
François Tracanelli is a retired pole vaulter from France, who was born in Italy. He set his personal best on 23 August 1981 at a meet in Nice.-Achievements:-References:**...

 in the Spanish heat. Representing Great Britain instead at the Ahoy final was Rugby League
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...

 player Keith Fielding
Keith Fielding
Keith John Fielding is an English former dual-code international rugby union and professional rugby league footballer of the 1960s, '70s and '80s who at representative level has played rugby union for England, and at club level for Moseley Rugby Football Club, playing at Wing, i.e...

, who would go on to finish a close second, matching Hemery's best ever performance by a British Superstar.

The winner of 1977 European Superstars was the returning Ties Kruize, who was now fully recovered from his car crash. With just the indoor steeplechase left, Kruize was one point behind Jean-Paul Coche but five ahead of Fielding. With Coche having completed his events Fielding needed to win the final race, and hope that Kruize would finish no better than third, something he duly did. However with Fielding already finished (and celebrating) Kruize passed speed skater
Speed skating
Speed skating, or speedskating is a competitive form of ice skating in which the competitors race each other in traveling a certain distance on skates. Types of speed skating are long track speed skating, short track speed skating, and marathon speed skating...

 Hans van Helden
Hans van Helden
Hans van Helden is a former speed skater, originally competing for the Netherlands, later for France.-Biography:...

 on the final straight to win by 2.5 points. An exhausted Fielding then told BBC TV that the loss was "a damn, bloody shame", but both qualified for the 1978 World Championship.

1978 to 1980 - Enter Brian Jacks

There was no UK national or European Superstars contest in 1978, but both events returned in 1979. First though came the new "Past Masters" event for competitors over 35, which was won with ease by Lynn Davies
Lynn Davies
Lynn Davies CBE was a member of the Cardiff Amateur Athletic Club and captain of the British Olympic long jump team in 1964....

, the 1964 Olympic Long Jump champion. Next came the introduction of judoka Brian Jacks
Brian Jacks
Brian Jacks is a British judoka who won Britain's first medal at a world championship, taking a bronze in Salt Lake City in 1967, and gained a second bronze at the 1972 Munich Olympics.-Superstars:...

, who would become Britain's most famous Superstar. An all-round athlete, Jacks had enormous upper body strength and he quickly came to dominate the gym tests, setting records in both the dips and squat thrusts. In particular Jacks was phenomenal at parallel bar dips, breaking the existing record repeatedly. In the 1979 UK national final Jacks comprehensively beat the field, and then went on to compete in Rotterdam for the European title.

No Briton had ever won this title, but Jacks was a strong favourite. Defending his title was Ties Kruize, and though Jacks won the gym tests and set a new record time in the cycling - hurtling down the steeply banked track to the delight of the crowd in the Ahoy - Kruize would not give in. As the final event steeplechase approached Jacks had a small lead, but was out of events; though he was a talented all-round athlete and unbelievable competitor, Jacks did not enjoy the running events, and rarely participated in them. In this instance this was his downfall and Kruize was able to accumulate enough points in the steeplechase to join Jacks in a tie for first place. With no tie-breaking system in operation both men were crowned European Superstar, though Jacks did have the consolation that he had become the most successful British Superstar ever.

By now Superstars was regularly attracting over 10 million TV viewers in the UK, and Jacks became a national hero, appearing on children's TV shows and picking up endorsements usually beyond the reach of a minority sport participant. Superstars also expanded again in 1980, adding International Superstars to its list of programmes, though this was as a direct replacement for the European event. Although wildly popular in the UK, USA, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, Holland and Australia, Superstars reached its peak at the turn of the decade, and one by one (starting in Europe) the participating nations fell away.

Jacks succumbed to shingles in late 1979 so was unable to travel to The Bahamas
The Bahamas
The Bahamas , officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a nation consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets . It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola , northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and southeast of the United States...

 for the World Championship, so he started the 1980 season with something to prove. Against him now was Daley Thompson
Daley Thompson
Francis Morgan Ayodélé "Daley" Thompson CBE , is a former decathlete from England. He won the decathlon gold medal at the Olympic Games in 1980 and 1984, and broke the world record for the event four times....

, globally recognised as the top multi-sports athlete after his sensational victory in the 1980 Olympic Games decathlon competition. With Brian Budd in attendance for the UK National final, Brian Jacks took on Thompson, Steve Assinder from Basketball, pentathlete
Modern pentathlon
The modern pentathlon is a sports contest that includes five events: pistol shooting, épée fencing, 200 m freestyle swimming, show jumping, and a 3 km cross-country run...

 Danny Nightingale
Danny Nightingale
Danny Nightingale is a British modern pentathlete and Olympic champion.He received a team gold medal in modern pentathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, with Adrian Parker and Jim Fox....

 and the new "Past Master", former 400m hurdler John Sherwood
John Sherwood (athlete)
John Sherwood is a British athlete, who won the bronze medal in the Olympic Games in Mexico City in 1968 for the 400 m hurdles. His time was 49.03 seconds, and he was third behind fellow British athlete David Hemery, who took gold, and German Gerhard Hennige...

, who won all his events in the heats, setting a new record. With new events like basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 included for the first time, Jacks was under pressure to show he was still the Superstar, and he did so with panache, winning his greatest victory.

In the gym tests Jacks scored an amazing 80 in the dips and 73 in the squat thrusts, and finished 18 points ahead of Sherwood in second place. Thompson could only finish third. John Sherwood in finishing in second place gained a place in the World Championships and with it the possibility of big prize money. To ensure that he was able to finish second Sherwood had to turn professional part-way through the competition in order to compete in the 100m (as his status as an amateur track and field athlete would normally have barred him from competing in this event). Although many amateur athletes (most notably Kjell Isaksson) had competed in Superstars since its inception, they had never been able to retain any prize money, with this instead going to their sport. In winning three World Superstar titles, Brian Budd won over $130,000, while Bob Seagren
Bob Seagren
Robert "Bob" Seagren was an American pole vaulter, the 1968 Olympic champion.A native of Pomona, California, Bob Seagren was one of the world's top pole vaulters in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He won six National AAU and four NCAA titles indoors and outdoors. Indoors he posted eight world...

 (the first World Champion) won over $200,000 - huge amounts in 1980.

Luckily for Sherwood - a PE teacher from Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

 at this time, and not a full-time sportsman - the World Championship would prove to be a roaring success for him. The same could not be said for Jacks, who desperately wanted to prove his ability by becoming the first European to win the title. In The Bahamas both Britons won events: Jacks in the weightlifting and the gym tests - after an epic struggle against Brian Budd - and Sherwood in the bike race. However it was Sherwood's two second places in the football and 800 metres that propelled him into second place, with the cycling coming at Jacks' expense, and winning him $15000 in the process. He was officially now Britain's best ever Superstar, although he had still finished 26 points behind the imperious Budd.

For Jacks the magnificent demolition of British all-comers earlier in the season, and his International Superstars triumph in Israel were now only distant memories. In Israel he had beaten both of the other European Superstars champions (Ties Kruize and Kjell Isaksson) as well as 1980 Tour de France
1980 Tour de France
The 1980 Tour de France was the 67th Tour de France. The total distance was 3945.5 km over 22 stages, the average speed of the riders was 35.317 km/h....

 winner Joop Zoetemelk
Joop Zoetemelk
Hendrik Gerardus Jozef "Joop" Zoetemelk is a retired professional racing cyclist from the Netherlands who has emigrated to France. He started the Tour de France 16 times and finished every time, a record. He won the race in 1980 and also came eighth, fifth, fourth and second...

 to claim the new title, but in The Bahamas he was outclassed. Budd and Jacks were similar types of athletes, good all round, and with a game-plan to win their key events and score well in the others. The problem for Jacks was Budd did this and he did not, and he lost by 31 points. His record breaking win in the World Championship gym tests (with an awe-inspiring 118 sliding squat thrusts) was his high water mark. He had never before been beaten in any Superstars contest, and there could only be one way on from here, down.

1981 - The Challenge of the Champions

To start the 1981 season, the BBC decided to invite the most successful British Superstars back for a one-off "Challenge of the Champions" programme, featuring all the past winners of the UK National contest, as well as the two "Past Masters" and the two men who had won heats of European Superstars. Joining Brian Jacks were David Hemery, Keith Fielding, Lynn Davies, John Conteh, Tim Crooks, Malcolm MacDonald and John Sherwood.

This was arguably the strongest ever UK Superstars contest, and with so many competitive sportsmen present it was no surprise that records tumbled. Jacks was the heavy favourite, and duly won his 'banker' events, but his inability to compete in the running tests left him facing huge obstacles.
His performance in the gym tests was simply astonishing, smashing his own parallel bars record in the starkly lit Cwmbran Stadium
Cwmbran Stadium
Cwmbran Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium and state of the art sports complex in Cwmbran Wales. The stadium holds 10,500 people and the main outdoor arena consists of an international standard athletics track and field surrounding a grass football pitch...

 sports centre with an awesome 100 in 54 seconds - had he pushed himself all the way to the minute he could easily have added more. His innovative 'rocking' technique (like Budd's sliding squat thrusts) was widely copied, but none of his rivals could get anywhere near him, and though Sherwood again pushed him close in the squats section, in reality Jacks was in a class of one here.

The key to winning Superstars had become to gain maximum points in your best events and then to place as highly in the others - simple in theory, but appallingly hard in practice. Jacks usually dominated in the gym and weightlifting, and almost always also won the cycling and canoeing. That gave him a nominal 40 point head start on his rivals, but if this sequence could be disrupted, then Jacks was relying on picking up more points elsewhere. He never competed in the two running events and was a weaker shot that his rivals, so he was then faced with winning the basketball or swimming which were much more equal events. And in the Challenge of the Champions Keith Fielding was able to disrupt Jacks' strategy by enough to beat him.

Early on Jacks was looking good, beating Fielding in a record time to win the canoeing, but once Fielding had won the cycling Jacks was beaten. Fielding had entered the event hoping to take the Superstars 100m record first and foremost, and then to put up a good showing against Jacks. Now he was the ultimate champion.

The key had been his ability to score well throughout - he was second in the steeplechase for instance - and even losing his 'banker' (the 100m to David Hemery) was not a problem. By winning the steeplechase in the final event, Lynn Davies was able to push Jacks down into third place, and with injuries forcing the judoka to miss the 1981 British final later that season, this would be an ignominious end to his Superstars story. For Fielding, the forgotten man of 1978, this was a new dawn that he followed up by a second convincing win in the UK final.

Here - in a new venue Bath
Bath
Bath is a city in the ceremonial county of Somerset in the south west of England. It is situated west of London and south-east of Bristol. The population of the city is 83,992. It was granted city status by Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth I in 1590, and was made a county borough in 1889 which...

 - the Rugby League winger reached his Superstars highpoint, dominating Davies, pentathlete Jim Fox
Jim Fox (pentathlete)
Jeremy Robert "Jim" Fox is a British modern pentathlete and Olympic champion.He won a team gold medal in modern pentathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, with Danny Nightingale and Adrian Parker.-References:*...

 and new challenger Andy Ripley
Andy Ripley
Andrew George Ripley, OBE was an English rugby union international, who represented England from 1972 to 1976, and the British Lions on their unbeaten 1974 tour of South Africa.-Early life:...

 from Rugby Union with a strong all-round performance. He had his share of luck (water skier Mike Hazelwood
Mike Hazelwood (water skier)
Michael "Mike" Hazelwood is a retired British water skier and a two-time world overall champion .-Career:...

 was tied in first place in the shooting when he mis-fired the decisive shot, gifting 10 points to Fielding) but he was on top form this season. He had every reason to believe he had a strong chance in both International and World Superstars later that year, but - as so often in Superstars - he could not hold his form; the ever increasing levels of competition saw him lose, first to a resurgent Ripley in the second International, then to a motor-oiled powered Jody Schekter in the 1981 World Final. Again, Fielding would never win another Superstars event. The curse of the European champions seemed to be holding strong.

1982 - A World Champion

Since 1978, the BBC had also produced an equally popular British Superteams event, which was dominated from the start by the "Athletes" - a team of Track and Field
Track and field
Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...

 stars, who won every series but the final one in 1985. From 1979 a stand-out performer in this team was Brian Hooper
Brian Hooper
Brian Roger Leslie Hooper in Sheerwater, Woking, Surrey is a former British Olympic pole vaulter, athletics coach and winner of the 1982 World Superstars Championship.-Athletics:...

, a pole-vaulter with an immense will to win. He first came to prominence in the 1979 Superteams final, failing to be able to jump onto a balance beam in the obstacle course
Obstacle course
An obstacle course is a series of challenging physical obstacles an individual or team must navigate usually while being timed. Obstacle courses can include running, climbing, jumping, crawling, swimming, and balancing elements with the aim of testing speed and endurance. Sometimes a course...

 event, and by 1982 he had blossomed into a fine, all-round performer.

Leading the 1982 Athletes team to Superteams victory, Hooper was trailed by the BBC as the new challenger to watch in that season's UK final. He was a strong swimmer, almost unbeatable in the canoeing and gym tests, and competitive in all his other events. And then he lost in his heat, to Karate
Karate
is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Islands in what is now Okinawa, Japan. It was developed from indigenous fighting methods called and Chinese kenpō. Karate is a striking art using punching, kicking, knee and elbow strikes, and open-handed techniques such as knife-hands. Grappling, locks,...

 fighter Vic Charles, and his promise seemed lost. However Charles was unable to compete in the 1982 final, and Hooper was his replacement. He would go on to win his next five straight Superstars events, becoming two time British Superstar, three-time International Superstar, and the 1982 World Superstar Champion. Only Brian Budd has a better record in the competition.

List of British National Superstars Champions

Year Athlete Sport Country
1973 David Hemery
David Hemery
David Peter Hemery, CBE, is a British former athlete, winner of the 400m hurdles at the 1968 Summer Olympics.He was born in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, but his father's work took the family to the United States, where he attended school and graduated from Boston University.Hemery's first...

400 metre hurdles England  
1974 John Conteh
John Conteh
John Conteh is a British former boxer who was world light-heavyweight boxing champion.Conteh is one of Britain's most successful boxing champions. At his peak in the mid to late 1970s he was considered good enough that he was touted as a possible opponent of Muhammad Ali...

Boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...

England  
1975 No Competition
1976 David Hemery 400 metre hurdles England  
1977 Tim Crooks
Tim Crooks
Timothy John Crooks is a former British rower who competed at the 1972 Summer Olympics and the 1976 Summer Olympics. He was seven times winner at Henley Royal Regatta and won the Wingfield Sculls three times....

Rowing
Rowing (sport)
Rowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on rivers, on lakes or on the ocean, depending upon the type of race and the discipline. The boats are propelled by the reaction forces on the oar blades as they are pushed against the water...

England  
1978 No Competition
1979 Brian Jacks
Brian Jacks
Brian Jacks is a British judoka who won Britain's first medal at a world championship, taking a bronze in Salt Lake City in 1967, and gained a second bronze at the 1972 Munich Olympics.-Superstars:...

Judo
Judo
is a modern martial art and combat sport created in Japan in 1882 by Jigoro Kano. Its most prominent feature is its competitive element, where the object is to either throw or takedown one's opponent to the ground, immobilize or otherwise subdue one's opponent with a grappling maneuver, or force an...

England  
1980 Brian Jacks Judo England  
1981 Keith Fielding
Keith Fielding
Keith John Fielding is an English former dual-code international rugby union and professional rugby league footballer of the 1960s, '70s and '80s who at representative level has played rugby union for England, and at club level for Moseley Rugby Football Club, playing at Wing, i.e...

Rugby League
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...

England  
1982 Brian Hooper
Brian Hooper
Brian Roger Leslie Hooper in Sheerwater, Woking, Surrey is a former British Olympic pole vaulter, athletics coach and winner of the 1982 World Superstars Championship.-Athletics:...

Pole Vault
Pole vault
Pole vaulting is a track and field event in which a person uses a long, flexible pole as an aid to leap over a bar. Pole jumping competitions were known to the ancient Greeks, as well as the Cretans and Celts...

England  
1983 Brian Hooper Pole Vault England  
1984 Garry Cook
Garry Cook
Garry Cook is a former British athlete, who competed mainly in the 800 metres with a best time of 1:44.55.He competed for Great Britain in the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, United States in the 4 x 400 metre relay where he won the Silver medal with his team mates Kriss Akabusi, Todd...

400 metres
400 metres
The 400 metres, or 400 metre dash, is a common sprinting event in track and field competitions. It has been featured in the athletics programme at the Summer Olympics since 1896 . On a standard outdoor running track, it is exactly one lap around the track. Runners start in staggered positions and...

England  
1985 Robin Brew
Robin Brew
Robin Brew, born 28 June 1962, is a British swimmer. He swam in the men's 200 metres individual medley at the 1984 Summer Olympics where he came fourth.-Approach:...

Swimming
Swimming (sport)
Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

Scotland  
1986 - 2002: No Competition
2003 Austin Healy Rugby Union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

England  
2004 Du'aine Ladejo
Du'aine Ladejo
Du'aine Ladejo is an English-born athlete and television personality. In his sports career, he was best known for winning the 400 metres sprint gold medal at the 1994 European Championships and being a member of the United Kingdom and England 400 metre relay squads at the European Championships,...

400 metres England  
2005 Alain Baxter
Alain Baxter
Alain Baxter is a professional skier from Scotland. He specialises in the slalom discipline.-Background:He is the son of Iain and Sue Baxter, who were both British Ski Team members, and was born in Edinburgh. He is named after the 70s French skiing star Alain Penz...

Alpine Skiing
Alpine skiing
Alpine skiing is the sport of sliding down snow-covered hills on skis with fixed-heel bindings. Alpine skiing can be contrasted with skiing using free-heel bindings: Ski mountaineering and nordic skiing – such as cross-country; ski jumping; and Telemark. In competitive alpine skiing races four...

Scotland  

List of European and International Superstars Champions

Year Athlete Sport Country
European Champions
1975 Kjell Isaksson
Kjell Isaksson
Kjell Gunnar Isaksson is a retired pole vaulter from Sweden, who broke the world record several times in 1972. Initially he broke the record set by Christos Papanikolaou of Greece and San Jose State University two years earlier, by jumping 5.51 metres in Austin, Texas--the second man to clear 18...

Pole Vault
Pole vault
Pole vaulting is a track and field event in which a person uses a long, flexible pole as an aid to leap over a bar. Pole jumping competitions were known to the ancient Greeks, as well as the Cretans and Celts...

Sweden  
1976 Kjell Isaksson Pole Vault Sweden  
1977 Ties Kruize
Ties Kruize
Ties Kruize is a former field hockey player from the Netherlands, who represented Holland at the Summer Olympics of 1972, 1976, and 1984...

Field Hockey
Field hockey
Field Hockey, or Hockey, is a team sport in which a team of players attempts to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking a ball into an opposing team's goal using sticks...

Netherlands  
1978 No Competition
1979 Ties Kruize Field Hockey Netherlands  
1979 Brian Jacks
Brian Jacks
Brian Jacks is a British judoka who won Britain's first medal at a world championship, taking a bronze in Salt Lake City in 1967, and gained a second bronze at the 1972 Munich Olympics.-Superstars:...

Judo
Judo
is a modern martial art and combat sport created in Japan in 1882 by Jigoro Kano. Its most prominent feature is its competitive element, where the object is to either throw or takedown one's opponent to the ground, immobilize or otherwise subdue one's opponent with a grappling maneuver, or force an...

Great Britain  
International Champions
1980 Brian Jacks Judo Great Britain  
1981 Andy Ripley
Andy Ripley
Andrew George Ripley, OBE was an English rugby union international, who represented England from 1972 to 1976, and the British Lions on their unbeaten 1974 tour of South Africa.-Early life:...

Rugby Union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

Great Britain  
1982 Brian Hooper
Brian Hooper
Brian Roger Leslie Hooper in Sheerwater, Woking, Surrey is a former British Olympic pole vaulter, athletics coach and winner of the 1982 World Superstars Championship.-Athletics:...

Pole Vault Great Britain  
1983 Brian Hooper Pole Vault Great Britain  
1984 Brian Hooper Pole Vault Great Britain  
1985 Robin Brew
Robin Brew
Robin Brew, born 28 June 1962, is a British swimmer. He swam in the men's 200 metres individual medley at the 1984 Summer Olympics where he came fourth.-Approach:...

Swimming
Swimming (sport)
Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

Great Britain  

  • In 1979 Ties Kruize and Brian Jacks finished as joint-winners of the European Championship.

Miscellany

  • Three men each won two European or International Superstars championships: Swedish pole vaulter Kjell Isaksson
    Kjell Isaksson
    Kjell Gunnar Isaksson is a retired pole vaulter from Sweden, who broke the world record several times in 1972. Initially he broke the record set by Christos Papanikolaou of Greece and San Jose State University two years earlier, by jumping 5.51 metres in Austin, Texas--the second man to clear 18...

    , Dutch field hockey player Ties Kruize
    Ties Kruize
    Ties Kruize is a former field hockey player from the Netherlands, who represented Holland at the Summer Olympics of 1972, 1976, and 1984...

     and British judoka Brian Jacks
    Brian Jacks
    Brian Jacks is a British judoka who won Britain's first medal at a world championship, taking a bronze in Salt Lake City in 1967, and gained a second bronze at the 1972 Munich Olympics.-Superstars:...

    . Brian Hooper
    Brian Hooper
    Brian Roger Leslie Hooper in Sheerwater, Woking, Surrey is a former British Olympic pole vaulter, athletics coach and winner of the 1982 World Superstars Championship.-Athletics:...

     won three, and one World championship.

  • One of the European competitors was Ivo Van Damme
    Ivo Van Damme
    Ivo Van Damme was a Belgian middle distance runner.Van Damme was born in Dendermonde. He played football until he was 16, but then switched to athletics...

    , a middle-distance runner who was killed in a road accident in 1976.

  • For most of the duration of the run of this programme on BBC TV, the programmes' producer was Peter Hylton Cleaver.

  • Brian Jacks had a computer game based on the competition, Brian Jacks Superstar Challenge, named after him.

  • In 1982, electronic scoring systems were introduced, with pressure pads for the squat thrust
    Squat thrust
    A squat thrust is a calisthenic exercise. Similar to a Burpee it typically is performed as follows:# From a standing position, drop to a squat position with your hands on the ground near your feet....

    s. These originally ran on the Commodore VIC-20
    Commodore VIC-20
    The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET...

    , and later on the BBC Micro
    BBC Micro
    The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation...

    . The programs were developed and the system operated by Simon Taylor.

  • In the spin-off called The Superteams a memorable moment was when British athlete Garry Cook
    Garry Cook
    Garry Cook is a former British athlete, who competed mainly in the 800 metres with a best time of 1:44.55.He competed for Great Britain in the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, United States in the 4 x 400 metre relay where he won the Silver medal with his team mates Kriss Akabusi, Todd...

     played goalkeeper in the six-a-side hockey contest without wearing a helmet, running out of the D circle and tackling an opponent.

  • The BBC Superstars used a musical theme composed by Johnny Pearson
    Johnny Pearson
    John Valmore Pearson known as Johnny Pearson, was a British composer, orchestra leader and pianist...

     titled "Heavy Action
    Heavy Action
    "Heavy Action" is a piece of music composed by Johnny Pearson. It is best known in the UK as the theme for Superstars, and in North America as the theme music for ABC and ESPN's Monday Night Football.-Superstars:...

    ". This piece of music later became familiar to Americans as the theme music for Monday Night Football
    Monday Night Football
    Monday Night Football is a live broadcast of the National Football League on ESPN. From to it aired on ABC. Monday Night Football was, along with Hallmark Hall of Fame, and the Walt Disney anthology television series, one of the longest running prime time commercial network television series...

    .

  • On 29 April 2008 it was announced that the show would be returning on Five for the summer of 2008. It was produced by TWI with eight one-hour shows. In a change of format, the competitors were split into four teams, captained by Kelly Holmes
    Kelly Holmes
    Dame Kelly Holmes, DBE, MBE is a retired British middle distance athlete. She specialised in the 800 metres and 1500 metres events and won a gold medal for both distances at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens...

    , Steve Redgrave
    Steve Redgrave
    Sir Steven Geoffrey Redgrave CBE is an English rower who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000. He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World Rowing Championships gold medals...

    , Roger Black
    Roger Black
    Roger Anthony Black MBE is a retired British athlete. During his athletics career, he won individual silver medals in the 400 metres sprint at both the Olympic Games and World Championships, two individual gold medals at the European Championships, and 4x400 metres relay gold medals at both the...

     and Mike Catt
    Mike Catt
    Michael John "Mike" Catt OBE is a South African-born former English rugby union footballer who played for London Irish and Bath. He earned 75 international caps for England and played in three World Cup Finals, in 1995, 2003 and 2007...

    .

  • After each event, the competitor who is ranked first gains 10 points, the next best ranked gets 7, then 4, 2 and then finally 1 point. These points are then totalled up to give a total out of 80 (from a maximum of eight events). Lynn Davies won seven of his eight events in the 1979 UK Past Masters contest and scored 70 points (a record).

United States

The Superstars was first broadcast by ABC Sports as a two-hour special in 1973. Bob Seagren
Bob Seagren
Robert "Bob" Seagren was an American pole vaulter, the 1968 Olympic champion.A native of Pomona, California, Bob Seagren was one of the world's top pole vaulters in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He won six National AAU and four NCAA titles indoors and outdoors. Indoors he posted eight world...

, an Olympic pole vault
Pole vault
Pole vaulting is a track and field event in which a person uses a long, flexible pole as an aid to leap over a bar. Pole jumping competitions were known to the ancient Greeks, as well as the Cretans and Celts...

 gold medalist, was the first winner. However, it was heavyweight champion boxer Joe Frazier who nearly stole the show, almost at the cost of life and limb. In the very first event, the 50 meter swimming heats, Frazier nearly drowned, and only after he was retrieved from the pool did he admit to commentators that he didn't know how to swim. When a reporter asked him why he tried the race, Frazier replied, "How was I to know I couldn't unless I tried it?" He also famously opined, "That Mark Spitz
Mark Spitz
Mark Andrew Spitz is a retired American swimmer. He won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, an achievement only surpassed by Michael Phelps who won eight golds at the 2008 Olympics....

," (who had won several gold medals for swimming at the 1972 Olympics) "is a tough muthafucker!"

Spin-offs included a women's version of the show, and a Superteams version, where the two World Series and Super Bowl teams each faced off (except that the owner of the New York Yankees
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...

 at the time prohibited his players from competing, so in years where the Yankees were in the World Series, their league's runner-up competed instead), with the winners competing in the finals. There were also brief runs of versions for celebrities and for juniors, where each state's Department of Education was asked to nominate one high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

, and those schools each sent one boy and one girl to qualifying rounds, with the final aired on TV.

The show remained popular in the 1970s, but ratings declined and the last edition produced by ABC came in 1984. NBC Sports
NBC Sports
NBC Sports is the sports division of the NBC television network. Formerly "a service of NBC News," it broadcasts a diverse array of programs, including the Olympic Games, the NFL, the NHL, MLS, Notre Dame football, the PGA Tour, the Triple Crown, and the French Open, among others...

 picked up the program the next year and carried it from 1985 to 1990. ABC took the show back in 1991, and broadcast it through 1994. During a three year period (1991-1993) the event was held in Cancun. Mexico. The competitions were held in different areas of Cancun Palace and Melia Cancun hotels. During that period former great NFL players Frank Gifford, Dan Dierdof and Lynn Swann worked as commentators of the Superstars Tournament.

There was no American version for three years (1995-1997)then ABC revived the show in 1998 and broadcast it through 2002. CBS Sports
CBS Sports
CBS Sports is a division of CBS Broadcasting which airs sporting events on the American television network. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on West 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street.CBS...

 picked up the show the next year.

Several athletes won the event two or more times. Among them:
  • Kyle Rote, Jr.
    Kyle Rote, Jr.
    Kyle Rote, Jr. is a retired American soccer forward who played seven seasons in the North American Soccer League and earned five caps with the United States men's national soccer team between 1973 and 1975. He led the NASL in scoring in 1973. He later coached the Memphis Americans of the Major...

    , football (soccer),1974, 1976, 1977
  • Renaldo Nehemiah
    Renaldo Nehemiah
    Renaldo Nehemiah is an American athlete who dominated the 110 m hurdle event from 1978 until 1981. He was the world record holder and the first man to run the high hurdles in under 13 seconds...

    , track and field/American football
    American football
    American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

    , 1981-83 and 1986
  • Herschel Walker
    Herschel Walker
    Herschel Junior Walker is an American mixed martial artist and a former American football player. He played college football for the University of Georgia Bulldogs and earned the 1982 Heisman Trophy. He began his professional career with the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League...

    , American football, 1987-88
  • Willie Gault
    Willie Gault
    Willie James Gault is a former American football wide receiver and Olympic athlete. Gault played in the National Football League for 11 seasons for the Chicago Bears and Los Angeles Raiders. He was a member of the Bears team that won Super Bowl XX, and was also a member of the U.S. Olympic team...

    , American football, 1989-90
  • Dave Johnson
    Dave Johnson (athlete)
    David Allen Johnson is a former Olympic decathlete from the United States. A native of North Dakota, he grew up in Montana and Oregon. He was part of Reebok's "Dan & Dave" advertising campaign leading up to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, where he won a bronze medal in the decathlon...

    , decathlon, 1993-94
  • Jason Sehorn
    Jason Sehorn
    Jason Heath Sehorn is a former professional American football defensive back in the National Football League.-Early years:Sehorn was born in Sacramento, California...

    , American football, 1998–2000


Speed skater
Speed skating
Speed skating, or speedskating is a competitive form of ice skating in which the competitors race each other in traveling a certain distance on skates. Types of speed skating are long track speed skating, short track speed skating, and marathon speed skating...

 Anne Henning
Anne Henning
Anne Elizabeth Henning is a former speed skater from the United States.Anne Henning grew up in Northbrook, Illinois and started in short track speed skating, but then, like many short track speed skaters before and after her, switched to long track speed skating...

 won three straight women's competitions (1976-78). Basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 player Ann Meyers
Ann Meyers
Ann Meyers Drysdale is a retired American basketball player and sportscaster. She was a standout player in high school, college, the Olympic Games, international tournaments, and the professional levels.Meyers was the first player to be part of the U.S. national team while still in high school...

 matched that feat in 1981 through 1983. Volleyball
Volleyball
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...

 player Linda Fernandez won two straight events in 1979 and 1980.

List of American winners

Year Athlete Sport
1973 Bob Seagren
Bob Seagren
Robert "Bob" Seagren was an American pole vaulter, the 1968 Olympic champion.A native of Pomona, California, Bob Seagren was one of the world's top pole vaulters in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He won six National AAU and four NCAA titles indoors and outdoors. Indoors he posted eight world...

Pole Vault
Pole vault
Pole vaulting is a track and field event in which a person uses a long, flexible pole as an aid to leap over a bar. Pole jumping competitions were known to the ancient Greeks, as well as the Cretans and Celts...

1974 Kyle Rote, Jr.
Kyle Rote, Jr.
Kyle Rote, Jr. is a retired American soccer forward who played seven seasons in the North American Soccer League and earned five caps with the United States men's national soccer team between 1973 and 1975. He led the NASL in scoring in 1973. He later coached the Memphis Americans of the Major...

Soccer
1975 O. J. Simpson
O. J. Simpson
Orenthal James "O. J." Simpson , nicknamed "The Juice", is a retired American collegiate and professional football player, football broadcaster, and actor...

Football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

1976 Kyle Rote, Jr. Soccer
1977 Kyle Rote, Jr. Soccer
1978 Wayne Grimditch
Wayne Grimditch
Wayne Grimditch is a Hall of Fame water skier who competed for the United States in the 1972 Olympic Games in Germany winning two silver medals in the demonstration sport of water skiing. Grimditch would go on to establish 10 U.S. national jumping records and four world marks in the sport...

Water Skiing
Water skiing
thumb|right|A slalom skier making a turn on a slalom waterski.Waterskiing is a sport where an individual is pulled behind a boat or a cable ski installation on a body of water, skimming the surface.-History:...

1979 Greg Pruitt
Greg Pruitt
Gregory Donald Pruitt is a former American football running back in the NFL from 1973 through 1984. He was selected to five Pro Bowls, four as a member of the Cleveland Browns and one as a member of the Los Angeles Raiders, the last one as a kick returner...

Football
1980 Charles White
Charles White (American football)
Charles White is a former professional American football running back. He had a distinguished college career and later played in the National Football League for the Cleveland Browns and the Los Angeles Rams.-College football:...

Football
1981 Renaldo Nehemiah
Renaldo Nehemiah
Renaldo Nehemiah is an American athlete who dominated the 110 m hurdle event from 1978 until 1981. He was the world record holder and the first man to run the high hurdles in under 13 seconds...

Track and field
1982 Renaldo Nehemiah Track and field
1983 Renaldo Nehemiah Football
1984 Tom Petranoff
Tom Petranoff
Thomas Alan Petranoff is a former world record holder in the javelin throw; his May 1983 effort was greater than the length of an entire American football field at 99.72 meters . Tom Petranoff's world record added precisely three meters to the previous global standard of 96.72, set in 1980 by...

Javelin
Javelin throw
The javelin throw is a track and field athletics throwing event where the object to be thrown is the javelin, a spear approximately 2.5 metres in length. Javelin is an event of both the men's decathlon and the women's heptathlon...

1985 Mark Gastineau
Mark Gastineau
Marcus Dell Gastineau is a former American football player who was a leading defensive end for the New York Jets from 1979 to 1988. A five-time Pro Bowler, his 100½ quarterback sacks in only his first 100 starts in the NFL made him one of the quickest and most feared pass rushers of his generation...

Football
1986 Renaldo Nehemiah Football
1987 Herschel Walker
Herschel Walker
Herschel Junior Walker is an American mixed martial artist and a former American football player. He played college football for the University of Georgia Bulldogs and earned the 1982 Heisman Trophy. He began his professional career with the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League...

Football
1988 Herschel Walker Football
1989 Willie Gault
Willie Gault
Willie James Gault is a former American football wide receiver and Olympic athlete. Gault played in the National Football League for 11 seasons for the Chicago Bears and Los Angeles Raiders. He was a member of the Bears team that won Super Bowl XX, and was also a member of the U.S. Olympic team...

Football
1990 Willie Gault Football
1991 Kelly Gruber
Kelly Gruber
Kelly Wayne Gruber is a former Major League Baseball third baseman.-Early career:Gruber played baseball at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas where his number was later retired. He was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the 1st round of the 1980 amateur draft but did not see time with the team...

Baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

1992 Mike Powell
Mike Powell (athlete)
Michael Anthony Powell born is a former American track and field athlete, and the holder of the long jump world record.Mike Powell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

Long Jump
Long jump
The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength, and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a take off point...

1993 Dave Johnson
Dave Johnson (athlete)
David Allen Johnson is a former Olympic decathlete from the United States. A native of North Dakota, he grew up in Montana and Oregon. He was part of Reebok's "Dan & Dave" advertising campaign leading up to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, where he won a bronze medal in the decathlon...

Decathlon
Decathlon
The decathlon is a combined event in athletics consisting of ten track and field events. The word decathlon is of Greek origin . Events are held over two consecutive days and the winners are determined by the combined performance in all. Performance is judged on a points system in each event, not...

1994 Dave Johnson Decathlon
1995 - -
1996 - -
1997 - -
1998 Jason Sehorn
Jason Sehorn
Jason Heath Sehorn is a former professional American football defensive back in the National Football League.-Early years:Sehorn was born in Sacramento, California...

Football
1999 Jason Sehorn Football
2000 Jason Sehorn Football
2001 Hermann Maier
Hermann Maier
Hermann Maier is an Austrian former alpine ski racer. Maier ranks among the finest alpine ski racers in history, having won four overall World Cup titles , two Olympic gold medals , and three World Championship titles...

Skiing
2002 Bode Miller
Bode Miller
Samuel Bode Miller is an American alpine ski racer. He is an Olympic and World Championship gold medalist, a two-time overall World Cup champion in 2005 and 2008, and is generally considered the greatest American alpine skier of all time...

Skiing
2003 Jeremy Bloom
Jeremy Bloom
Jeremy Ryan Bloom is a three-time World Champion, two-time Olympian and eleven-time World Cup gold medalist in freestyle moguls skiing. In 2005, he won a record six straight World Cup events, the most in a single season in the sport's history....

Freestyle Skiing
Freestyle skiing
Freestyle skiing is form of skiing which used to encompass two disciplines: aerials, and moguls. Except the two disciplines mentioned earlier Freestyle Skiing now consists of Skicross, Half Pipe and Slope Style...


2009 edition

In 2009 the franchise was revived for ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

. The Superstars
The Superstars (2009 edition)
The Superstars is an American television series first aired by ABC on June 23, 2009.-Filming:On January 6, 2009, Variety reported that Juma Entertainment and Blue Entertainment Sports TV would produce a six-week series on ABC starting on June 23, 2009 featuring pairing of celebrities and athletes...

 paired athletes and celebrities to compete as a team. Kristi Leskinen
Kristi Leskinen
Kristi Leskinen is an American freestyle skier. She appeared on the cover of Powder magazine's Photo Annual in 2004. She grew up in Uniontown, PA, near Seven Springs Mountain Resort and Hidden Valley ski resorts. She was ranked #90 on the FHM 100 Sexiest Women of 2005...

 (Freestyle Skiing
Freestyle skiing
Freestyle skiing is form of skiing which used to encompass two disciplines: aerials, and moguls. Except the two disciplines mentioned earlier Freestyle Skiing now consists of Skicross, Half Pipe and Slope Style...

) and Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Maksim Aleksandrovich Chmerkovskiy is a Ukrainian-American Latin Ballroom dance champion, choreographer, and instructor. He is best known as one of the professional dancers on the American television series Dancing with the Stars, on which he first appeared in season two...

 (Ballroom Dancing) won the competition.

Obstacle Course variations

The popular obstacle course was the final event of the original Superstars to determine the overall winner. The Superteams version featured the obstacle course as an earlier event. The original course had the contestants climb a 12' rope wall, run through a tubular tunnel, push a blocking sled (or traverse across monkey bars in the Women's and Superteams versions), cleanly step through a dozen tires (2 rows of 6), jump over a water hazard (rectangular pool of water), clear a 4'6" high bar, jump two sets of hurdles and cross the FINISH line. Penalty seconds were added for missing tires, stepping in the water hazard and knocking down the high bar and/or hurdles. Some athletes have shown super skills on this course by climbing the wall without using the rope and clearing the high bar like a hurdle.

For the 2009 "elimination event" version, contestants have to climb a rope wall, duck under four rope hurdles (2 sets side-by-side) (this was changed mid-season to a balance beam just over 3-inches wide), cleanly step through a bungee grid, ascend and descend a large ramp, push through a large door-like block, jump two sets of hurdles, run through a cargo net and cross the FINISH line.

World Superstars

A World Superstars competition was held annually from 1977 through 1982. Bob Seagren
Bob Seagren
Robert "Bob" Seagren was an American pole vaulter, the 1968 Olympic champion.A native of Pomona, California, Bob Seagren was one of the world's top pole vaulters in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He won six National AAU and four NCAA titles indoors and outdoors. Indoors he posted eight world...

 won the initial competition followed by three straight wins for Canadian soccer player Brian Budd
Brian Budd
Brian Budd was a Canadian professional soccer player best known for winning the World Superstars competition three years in a row from 1978 to 1980. He was also a soccer sportscaster.-Early years:...

. Budd was not allowed to enter again because of a new rule barring anyone from competing in a Superstars competition after their third victory. South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 Formula One
Formula One
Formula One, also known as Formula 1 or F1 and referred to officially as the FIA Formula One World Championship, is the highest class of single seater auto racing sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile . The "formula" designation in the name refers to a set of rules with which...

 racer Jody Scheckter
Jody Scheckter
Jody David Scheckter is a South African former auto racing driver, the Formula One World Drivers Champion.-Career:Scheckter was born in East London, South Africa and educated at Selborne College.-Formula One:...

 won in 1981 and British pole vaulter Brian Hooper
Brian Hooper
Brian Roger Leslie Hooper in Sheerwater, Woking, Surrey is a former British Olympic pole vaulter, athletics coach and winner of the 1982 World Superstars Championship.-Athletics:...

 won in 1982.

List of World Superstars Champions

Year Athlete Sport Country
1977 Bob Seagren
Bob Seagren
Robert "Bob" Seagren was an American pole vaulter, the 1968 Olympic champion.A native of Pomona, California, Bob Seagren was one of the world's top pole vaulters in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He won six National AAU and four NCAA titles indoors and outdoors. Indoors he posted eight world...

Pole Vault
Pole vault
Pole vaulting is a track and field event in which a person uses a long, flexible pole as an aid to leap over a bar. Pole jumping competitions were known to the ancient Greeks, as well as the Cretans and Celts...

United States  
1978 Brian Budd
Brian Budd
Brian Budd was a Canadian professional soccer player best known for winning the World Superstars competition three years in a row from 1978 to 1980. He was also a soccer sportscaster.-Early years:...

Football Canada  
1979 Brian Budd Football Canada  
1980 Brian Budd Football Canada  
1981 Jody Schekter Motor Racing South Africa  
1982 Brian Hooper
Brian Hooper
Brian Roger Leslie Hooper in Sheerwater, Woking, Surrey is a former British Olympic pole vaulter, athletics coach and winner of the 1982 World Superstars Championship.-Athletics:...

Pole Vault Great Britain  

SuperTeams

A companion competition, this event would pit the two World Series teams and the two Super Bowl teams in a playoff-type match using all the Superstars events, with some team events added such as Hawaiian rowing and the Tug-of-War. The running, swimming, and cycling events were relays, with the cycling done on tandem bikes; the obstacle course (which had its blocking sleds replaced by monkey bars similar to those used in the women's competition, as it was felt that the football teams would have too much of an advantage over the baseball teams) was decided by best combined time. The points complied and the winners would advance to the SuperTeams finals where an ultimate champions would be crowned. The New York Yankees advanced to the World Series in 1977, 1978, and 1981, and was eligible to participate in these events held the early in the following year, however Yankees owner George Steinbrenner refused to allow his players to compete, as he had several of his top players under lucrative long term guaranteed contracts that required players to get ownership permission to participate in outside athletic activities, which in this case Steinbrenner refused to grant. In those years, loser of the ALCS in those years took the Yankees place, and in all three years that team ultimately won the competition.

In the 1978 final, the Dallas Cowboys
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football franchise which plays in the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference of the National Football League . They are headquartered in Valley Ranch in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas...

 and Kansas City Royals
Kansas City Royals
The Kansas City Royals are a Major League Baseball team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Royals are a member of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. From 1973 to the present, the Royals have played in Kauffman Stadium...

 split the first six events, so the tug-of-war would decide the winner. However, while there was a time limit in the preliminary rounds, there was none in the final, and after 75 minutes in which neither team came particularly close to winning, the organizers declared the event (and, as a result, the competition) a tie.

Winners

  • 1975 - Los Angeles Dodgers
    Los Angeles Dodgers
    The Los Angeles Dodgers are a professional baseball team based in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers are members of Major League Baseball's National League West Division. Established in 1883, the team originated in Brooklyn, New York, where it was known by a number of nicknames before becoming...

  • 1976 - Pittsburgh Steelers
    Pittsburgh Steelers
    The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The team currently belongs to the North Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League . Founded in , the Steelers are the oldest franchise in the AFC...

  • 1977 - Cincinnati Reds
    Cincinnati Reds
    The Cincinnati Reds are a Major League Baseball team based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are members of the National League Central Division. The club was established in 1882 as a charter member of the American Association and joined the National League in 1890....

  • 1978 - (tie) Dallas Cowboys
    Dallas Cowboys
    The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football franchise which plays in the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference of the National Football League . They are headquartered in Valley Ranch in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas...

     & Kansas City Royals
    Kansas City Royals
    The Kansas City Royals are a Major League Baseball team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Royals are a member of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. From 1973 to the present, the Royals have played in Kauffman Stadium...

  • 1979 - Kansas City Royals
    Kansas City Royals
    The Kansas City Royals are a Major League Baseball team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Royals are a member of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. From 1973 to the present, the Royals have played in Kauffman Stadium...

  • 1980 - Los Angeles Rams
  • 1981 - Philadelphia Eagles
    Philadelphia Eagles
    The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are members of the East Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...

  • 1982 - Oakland Athletics
    Oakland Athletics
    The Oakland Athletics are a Major League Baseball team based in Oakland, California. The Athletics are a member of the Western Division of Major League Baseball's American League. From to the present, the Athletics have played in the O.co Coliseum....

  • 1983 - Washington Redskins
    Washington Redskins
    The Washington Redskins are a professional American football team and members of the East Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The team plays at FedExField in Landover, Maryland, while its headquarters and training facility are at Redskin Park in Ashburn,...


Music

"Heavy Action
Heavy Action
"Heavy Action" is a piece of music composed by Johnny Pearson. It is best known in the UK as the theme for Superstars, and in North America as the theme music for ABC and ESPN's Monday Night Football.-Superstars:...

" is the name of the theme tune written by Johnny Pearson
Johnny Pearson
John Valmore Pearson known as Johnny Pearson, was a British composer, orchestra leader and pianist...

 for this televised sports competition, leading to the piece being frequently misidentified as "Superstars". ABC also used the song during coverage of Monday Night Football
Monday Night Football
Monday Night Football is a live broadcast of the National Football League on ESPN. From to it aired on ABC. Monday Night Football was, along with Hallmark Hall of Fame, and the Walt Disney anthology television series, one of the longest running prime time commercial network television series...

.

The ABC version in the 1970s and 1980s also used an instrumental version of Superstar
Superstar (Jesus Christ Superstar song)
"Superstar" is the title song from the 1970 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. It was released as a single in 1969, before the album was completed. Sung by Murray Head with the Trinidad Singers, it reached number 78 on first release. Murray Head reached...

(from Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Tim Rice. The musical started off as a rock opera concept recording before its first staging on Broadway in 1971...

) as its theme.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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