45 Fun Facts About Wilma Rudolph

Which childhood disease left Wilma Rudolph's left leg in a brace for years?

Polio weakened her left leg and foot, and doctors doubted she would ever walk normally; she had already survived double pneumonia and scarlet fever.

Rudolph was born in 1940 in Saint Bethlehem, just outside which Tennessee city where she grew up?

Clarksville became home soon after her birth in nearby Saint Bethlehem on 23 June 1940; the city later named a boulevard after her and raised a life-size statue of her.

Rudolph's siblings took turns doing what to her weakened leg every day?

Massaging it was a family job: her mother learned the routine from hospital staff and taught the older children, who worked on the leg several times a day until she could walk unaided.

Rudolph travelled about 50 miles for regular treatment at which Black medical college in Nashville?

Meharry Medical College gave her leg heat and water therapy; she and her mother made the trip for two years because her hometown offered Black patients little medical care.

Coach C. C. Gray said the young Rudolph was little, fast and always in his way, earning her which nickname?

Skeeter, short for mosquito, stuck through her school years; Gray also started the girls' track team at Burt High after a college coach asked him to.

In which sport did Rudolph first star at Burt High School before turning to track?

Basketball came first: once her brace was off she joined her siblings' backyard games, then became an all-state player at Burt High who scored 49 points in one game.

Which Tennessee State coach spotted the teenage Rudolph and invited her to his summer track camp at 14?

Ed Temple's runners travelled to meets packed into a station wagon; he went on to lead the US women's Olympic track teams of 1960 and 1964.

What was the nickname of the Tennessee State women's track team Rudolph ran with?

The Tigerbelles, Tennessee State's women's track team, sent 40 athletes to the Olympics and won 34 national team titles under one coach; Rudolph trained with them while still at high school.

The teenage Rudolph failed to win a race at her first big meet, held at which Alabama college?

Tuskegee left her crushed, but after a summer at a college training camp she won all nine events she entered at a national AAU meet.

At the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Rudolph held which distinction on the US track and field team?

Youngest member: a 16-year-old high-school junior, she was knocked out in the heats of her individual sprint, four years before she dominated the next Games.

What medal did Rudolph win in the 4 x 100 relay at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics?

Bronze: back home her classmates passed the medal around, and when she tried to polish off their handprints she found that bronze doesn't shine, so she resolved to go for gold next time.

Why was Rudolph's 11.0-second Rome 100 metres win not ratified as a world record?

The wind was too strong: a tailwind of 2.75 metres per second exceeded the 2.0 m/s limit for record purposes, so her 11.0 stood only as the winning time.

Rudolph was the first American woman to win the Olympic 100 metres since which athlete at the 1936 Games?

Helen Stephens, Missouri's 'Fulton Flash', took the 1936 title from defending champion Stella Walsh and was never beaten in her brief career; the next American winner was Rudolph, 24 years on.

Rudolph stepped in a hole at the Rome practice track the day before her first race and hurt what?

Her ankle swelled and had to be iced and strapped, yet she equalled the world record of 11.3 seconds in her semifinal and went on to win all three of her events.

Which leg did Rudolph run in the Rome 4 x 100 relay final?

Anchor: she nearly dropped a fumbled final pass, set off about two metres down, then ran past Germany's anchor, Jutta Heine, to win gold for an all-Tennessee State quartet.

How did Rudolph's college coach punish runners for every minute they were late to practice?

An extra lap per minute was his rule, and Rudolph learned it the hard way: after oversleeping by half an hour she had to run all 30.

The Italians gave Rudolph which nickname after Rome?

La Gazzella Nera, the Black Gazelle, was the Italian press's name for her speed and grace; Rome's papers also called her the Black Pearl, and the French called her La Perle Noire.

The French nicknamed Rudolph La Perle Noire and, after a Glenn Miller hit, La what?

Chattanooga Choo-Choo, the 1941 swing hit about a train ride to Tennessee, was the French press's salute to a sprinter from that state.

Rudolph became a household name partly because Rome 1960 was the first Summer Olympics with what?

US television coverage came from CBS, which made Rome the first Summer Games shown on American screens, so millions at home watched her three wins and she flew back a national celebrity.

Rudolph refused to attend her own hometown homecoming celebration unless what changed?

It was integrated: she would not attend unless Black and white residents could celebrate together, so the parade and banquet of October 1960 became the first integrated public event in the town's history.

What held up Rudolph's team on the way to a 1960 meet in Texas?

Their driver refused to take them, a snub of the kind Black athletes met across the Jim Crow South, and the team had to wait until a replacement was found.

The US Information Agency made its 1961 documentary Wilma Rudolph: Olympic Champion chiefly for which audience?

Viewers overseas: the agency was America's Cold War voice abroad and aimed its work only at foreign audiences, so her story was filmed as an advertisement for the United States.

Rudolph's last races came at Stanford in 1962, in a dual meet against which country?

The Soviet Union: she won the 100 metres and ran on the winning sprint relay in the Cold War dual meet, then retired at 22 while still the world record holder.

Rudolph explained skipping the 1964 Tokyo Olympics by comparing herself to which athlete's choice in 1936?

Jesse Owens walked away after his four golds of 1936, and she said she would likewise 'stick with the glory' she already had rather than risk something lacking in Tokyo.

At the 1956 Olympic trials, what did veteran sprinter Mae Faggs tell the nervous young Rudolph to do?

Stick with me, said Faggs, a relay gold medallist in 1952, promising that was all it took to make the team; Rudolph matched her stride for stride and both went to Melbourne.

In 1963 the State Department sent Rudolph as a goodwill ambassador to the Friendship Games in which region?

West Africa: she represented the United States at the Games of Friendship in Dakar, Senegal, on a month-long tour that also took her to Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Upper Volta.

In 1963 Rudolph joined a protest in her hometown to desegregate what?

A restaurant: the triple Olympic champion, just back from representing her country abroad, joined fellow protesters at a hometown restaurant that still refused to serve Black customers.

After illness cost her two years of school, Rudolph started in, and later taught, which grade?

Second grade: illness kept her at home until she was seven, so she entered Cobb Elementary a level up, and after retiring from the track she went back there to teach that same grade.

Which future boxing legend had a crush on Rudolph at the 1960 Rome Olympics?

Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, invited her home to Louisville after the Games and drove her around the city in a pink Cadillac convertible.

The 1977 TV film Wilma, based on her autobiography, gave an early role to which future star?

Denzel Washington made his screen debut in Wilma as her boyfriend; Shirley Jo Finney played the sprinter, Cicely Tyson co-starred, and Bud Greenspan wrote and directed the NBC film.

Rudolph based her youth foundation in which city, where she lit the 1987 Pan American Games flame?

Indianapolis was the base of the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, which gave children free coaching and help with schoolwork; the triple Olympic champion called founding it her greatest accomplishment.

Vice President Hubert Humphrey asked Rudolph in 1967 to join a programme sending famous athletes where?

Poor inner-city neighbourhoods were where the 1967 scheme sent its star athletes to coach young people in sport, and she later set up her own foundation to carry on the work.

Rudolph died in 1994 at just 54 from which illness?

Brain and throat cancer killed her on 12 November 1994 at her home in Brentwood, Tennessee; she was buried with the Olympic flag draped over her casket.

Rudolph won the 1961 James E. Sullivan Award, given annually to whom?

The top US amateur athlete of 1960 was judged to be decathlete Rafer Johnson, not the triple champion of Rome; Rudolph received the Sullivan Award a year later, in 1961.

The Women's Sports Foundation gave its first Wilma Rudolph Courage Award in 1996 to which athlete, who had severe asthma?

Jackie Joyner-Kersee won two Olympic heptathlon titles and a long jump gold while managing severe asthma; the award honours sportswomen who overcome adversity, as its namesake did.

The former American high school in which European city now carries Wilma Rudolph's name?

Berlin: the Berlin American High School closed when the last US forces left the city in 1994, and the German school that opened in its Dahlem buildings now carries her name.

Which baseball star, met at a Philadelphia track meet in 1956, did Rudolph call her first Black hero?

Jackie Robinson posed for a photograph with the 16-year-old after her races and urged her to keep running; after that day, she wrote, he was her first Black hero.

On a post-Olympic tour of Europe, what did souvenir-hunting German fans steal from Rudolph?

Her shoes were taken by fans who then surrounded her bus and beat on it until she waved; in Cologne, mounted police had to hold her admirers back.

The 1956 Olympic relay gold went to Australia, anchored by which double sprint champion of those Games?

Betty Cuthbert had rated her chances of making the team so low that she bought tickets to watch the Melbourne Games as a spectator; she left them with three sprint golds.

Rudolph's father, Ed, worked on the railroads in which job?

Railway porter Ed Rudolph laid down the law at home: when his teenage daughter had a baby in 1958, he forbade her to see the father, Robert Eldridge, whom she later married.

Her college coach said the unflappable Rudolph often did what between a semifinal and a final?

Went to sleep: there was not a nerve in her body, her coach told Time magazine in Rome, calling her almost lazy until she settled over the starting blocks.

What did the Roman crowd chant as Rudolph ran her lap of honour after the 100 metres?

Vilma! Vilma! rang round the stadium as she circled the track; the standard Italian alphabet has no W, a letter Italians meet only in borrowed words.

What did President Kennedy do as he sat down with Rudolph in the Oval Office in 1961?

Missed his rocking chair as he went to sit, the story goes, and joked that it was not every day he got to meet an Olympic champion.

Which operation early in 1960 cleared up an infection that had long sapped Rudolph's strength?

A tonsillectomy rid her of a persistent tonsil infection, and within months she had set a world record and won three Olympic golds in Rome.

What cost Rudolph's Rome date, US sprint favourite Ray Norton, a relay gold after he finished last in both sprint finals?

An illegal baton pass: Norton set off too soon and took the baton beyond the exchange zone, so the winning US team was disqualified and he left Rome with no medals while she took three golds.