Farnsworth was born in Portland, Maine, and is Jewish.[1][2] He graduated high school and attended two years of a pre-college program in Canada, and then lived in Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan, from the ages of 20 to 26 years old.[3] There, he studied at Chuo University.[3][4] He has lived in Bois-des-Filion, Canada.[5]
At the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Israel, Farnsworth won a gold medal in the light-heavyweight class.[7][8] He won the 1972 Canadian Championships U-93 in Halifax, Canada.[9][10]
He described his experience during the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics by members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, who had infiltrated the Olympic Village:
I was 50 feet away. I saw ... the Arab with the mask, standing on the balcony. I saw the guy. I mean, we had to run underneath where the Israelis were, and one of my buddies had an Israeli friend, went to visit him, and he came back at 1:30 in the morning, and the terrorists came in at about 3:00. So he was an hour and a half away from being dead himself. That was horrible. We were 50 feet away from the whole thing. One interesting story was, separating us was the Korean housing, and when it first happened, I walked down to the Korean apartments, and I saw the door open in one apartment. I see a Korean guy sitting in the window with his rifle, facing the Arabs or where the Israelis were held. He told me he was an ex-American Marine, but he was a Korean citizen. He was on the rifle team. He said, “I’m going to get one of those f*cking Arabs!” ... But they came and took his rifle away![3]
Farnsworth won the 1973 Canadian Championships U-93 in Whitehorse, Canada.[9]
