Wilma Rudolph

Sprinter

• Born: June 23, 1940
• Birthplace: St. Bethlehem, Tennessee
• Died: November 12, 1994
• Place of death: Brentwood, near Nashville, Tennessee

Sport: Track and field (sprints)

Early Life

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee. She was the sixth of eight children born to Blanche Ruldoph, a domestic worker, and Ed Rudolph, a retired porter, who had eleven children by a former marriage. Shortly after Wilma was born, the family moved a few miles away to Clarksville, Tennessee, which was a corn and tobacco community of about sixteen thousand people.

Growing up was not an easy task for Wilma. She weighed only four and one-half pounds at birth, and there was concern that she would not live. Wilma did live, but she faced a series of illnesses when she was four. Bouts with double pneumonia and scarlet fever left her with no use of her left leg. Although doctors were not sure if treatment would help, Wilma’s mother used her weekly day off work to drive forty-five miles into Nashville for heat and water treatments. Wilma’s mother and some of her older brothers and sisters learned how to rub Wilma’s legs four times a day between her trips to Nashville. By the age of eight, she could walk with the aid of a leg brace and then a specially built shoe. By age eleven, she no longer needed the special shoe.

The Road to Excellence

When Wilma was finally able to move without the leg brace, she took up basketball in the family’s backyard. When others stopped to rest, she continued playing. Her mother said she was making up for all the playing she had missed.

In 1953, at the age of thirteen, Wilma tried out for basketball at Burt High School in Clarksville. She had great success in the sport, earning all-state honors for four years and averaging 32 points per game her sophomore year.

One of the best track programs for girls and women at this time was coached by Ed Temple of Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State University in Nashville. While watching Wilma play basketball, Temple recognized her potential as a runner and encouraged Clinton Gray, Wilma’s basketball coach, to start a track team. Wilma entered competitions in the 50-, 75-, and 100-yard events and was state champion for three years; during that time, she never lost a race. In the summers during her high school years, Gray drove Wilma to Nashville where she worked out with Temple’s outstanding Tigerbelle Track Club. She was such a great runner that only a year after beginning to run track, the sixteen-year-old Wilma Rudolph and three other members of the Tigerbelles were on their way to Melbourne, Australia, to compete in the 1956 Olympic Games.

The Emerging Champion

Wilma and her teammates finished with a third-place bronze medal in the 4 100-meter relay at the Melbourne Olympics. They returned to the United States determined to do better when the 1960 Olympics were held in Rome.

In 1957, Wilma graduated from high school and enrolled at Tennessee State University, where she was an elementary education major and a track star. Her promising athletic career was sidelined once again by illness and injury. Because of illness, she did not compete in the 1958 season. She returned to competition in 1959, only to suffer a pulled muscle in her left thigh during a meet with the Soviet Union. The Rome Olympics were fast approaching, and early in 1960, Wilma’s tonsils were removed. In spite of these setbacks, Wilma made the 1960 track team and went off to Rome.

Wilma tied the world record of 11.3 seconds in a preliminary heat of the 100-meter dash. In the finals of that event, she won by three yards. She followed that with a victory in the 200-meter dash. With two gold medals already hers, the world watched anxiously to see if Wilma could earn a third gold as the anchor runner of the U.S. 4 100-meter relay team. Wilma was behind when she got the handoff. This was just one more challenge for Wilma, and when the race ended, the United States had won by three-tenths of a second. Wilma became the first American woman to win three gold medals in an Olympics.

During the months that followed her Olympic triumphs, the “world’s fastest woman” was on a whirlwind tour, competing in Europe and giving speeches, attending banquets, and granting interviews. One of the most important events may have been her homecoming celebration in Clarksville, when a town that had been racially separated joined together to welcome home its Wilma.

Continuing the Story

Wilma quit running competitive track in 1962. In spite of a short career, Wilma influenced many people with both her speed and her personality. In 1961, Wilma was asked to compete in the usually all-male Millrose Games in Madison Square Garden, the first time in thirty years that a woman had been asked to run in the event. As expected, she won the 60-yard dash in 6.9 seconds, tying her own world record. She was female athlete of the year and was selected as the winner of the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award for the outstanding amateur athlete in the United States. She was only the third woman in thirty-one years to win the award.

After the end of her track career, Wilma worked with and for young people in many ways. She was a teacher, coach, director of the Youth Foundation in Chicago, author of a children’s book (Wilma Rudolph on Track, 1980), and mother of four. She established the Wilma Rudolph Foundation in Indianapolis to help develop young athletes for competition as well as to help them discover the fun and value of sports.

Summary

It is not uncommon for an athlete to overcome illness or injury, but for Wilma Rudolph, the obstacles were staggering. For many other people, it would have been a victory to be able to walk. For Wilma, that was not enough. By her constant effort and with support from her family and friends, Wilma went from a young girl in a wheelchair to the world’s fastest woman.

Bibliography

Plowden, Martha Ward. Olympic Black Women. Gretna, La.: Pelican, 1996.

Rudolph, Wilma. Wilma. New York: New American Library, 1977.

Smith, Maureen Margaret. Wilma Rudolph: A Biography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006.

Temple, Ed. “Long Legs, Wide Smile, Big Heart.” Newsweek 134, no. 17 (October 25, 1999): 58.

Tricard, Louise M. American Women’s Track and Field: A History, 1895 Through 1980. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996.

Wiggins, David Kenneth. Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006.