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The American discus thrower Al Oerter must be considered one of the greatest of all modern Olympians, as well as the most successful of all competitors in the four throwing events, having won the gold medal at Melbourne in 1956, Rome 1960, Tokyo 1964 and Mexico City 1968.

The New Yorker, who was to win his first Olympic title when he was 20, was practising sprinting at 15 when a wayward discus bounced past him on the track. When he returned it further than any of the specialist throwers, a coach wisely suggested he switch from track running to the throwing event celebrated in painted pottery by the Ancient Greeks.

Oerterinsisted he arrived at his first Olympics as an innocent. “At 20 years of age I just didn’t know what it was all about. I was so many miles from home, nobody had heard of me. But somehow I loosed off the winning throw in the very first round. When I was up on the rostrum, getting the gold medal, my knees began to buckle and I nearly fell.”

Four years later, in Rome, the defending champion realised he was the man everyone was aiming to beat. “I began to think about what the Olympics really meant to me, how much I valued being there with the rest of the world. I became so tense that it wasn’t until the fifth or the sixth rounds that I took the lead and won again.”

A slipped disc in the 1963 season meant that Oerter was to suffer back pain for many years. In the spring of the 1964 season the champion started wearing a ski jacket to keep his body warm as well as ultrasonic massage and injections of cortisone. He used a home made surgical collar of a towel and a leather strap, which he wore when he competed at Crystal Palace, London.

All went well until six days before the Tokyo Olympic discus final when Oerter tore cartilage in his rib cage. When the American team doctors told him he could not compete the desperate champion asked them to reconsider. He was given heat treatment and massage, swathed in surgical tape and had his right side regularly packed in ice.

Somehow, even though he said later it felt as though someone was trying to tear out his ribs, Oerter managed to win his third Olympic title with a throw of 61 metres, ahead of Czechoslovakia’s then world record holder Ludvik Danek. Choked with emotion and pain, he blurted out: “These are the Olympics — you die for them.”

By the time of the 1968 Games in Mexico City, fellow American Jay Silvester had raised the world discus record to 66.5 metres and then 68.40. Oerter admitted later that he did not think he had a chance of beating Silvester until the day of the Olympic final.

“I learnt to imagine every possible circumstance and all the basic movements crossing the throwing circle, depending upon the weather. Then nothing could come as a surprise. When I came through in the third round the others tightened up and I went on to have two more throws over my lifetime best.”

Astonishingly, after a decade out of competition Oerter was to improve his lifetime best to 69.46 metres at the age of 43 in 1980 when he placed fourth in the US Olympic trials though by then the US had decided to boycott the Moscow Games.

Oerter, whose mother was Czechoslovakian and his father a German, believed passionately in the international sports family. He was flatly against the use of anabolic steroids by athletes.

He is survived by his wife, the long jumper Cathy Caroll, and two daughters from his first marriage.

Alfred Oerter, discus champion, was born on September 19, 1936. He died October 1, 2007, aged 71