Kevin Sethre, staff writer

In the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Wilma Rudolph made history as the first American woman to ever win three gold medals in track.  It was an amazing accomplishment that wouldn’t be replicated for nearly three decades, and her backstory makes it even more spectacular.

After being born prematurely at only 4 ½ pounds on June 23, 1940 in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, she spent most of her childhood in bed while suffering from double pneumonia, scarlet fever, and polio. She was fitted with a leg brace at age six, and told by her doctor that she would never walk again. However, she was able to walk with the help of her braces at the age of eight, and by age 11, she began playing basketball without them at all.

Rudolph was a natural athlete, and she quickly became an all-state player and set a Tennessee high school record by scoring 49 points in a game. Soon after, Ed Temple, the track coach at Tennessee State, recruited Rudolph to help him start his women’s track program. Despite still being in high school, Rudolph began competing in college track meets and made the United States Olympic team for the Summer Olympics in Melbourne in 1956, where she took home a bronze medal as part of the 4×100 meter relay at only 16 years old.

She became the star of the Games four years later in Rome when she won gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter dash and anchored the victorious American 4×100 team.  She tied the world record for the 100 meters with a time of 11.3 seconds in the semifinals, then won the final with a time of 11.0 seconds, which would have broken the record if she hadn’t benefitted from a tailwind that was higher than the limit. She broke the Olympic record in the first heat of the 200 meters with a time of 23.2 seconds, then won the final with a time of 24.0 seconds. In a 4×100 team that was made up of her teammates from Tennessee State, she ran the anchor leg when they set a world record of 44.4 seconds in the semifinals, then followed that up by passing Germany during her anchor leg of the final on the way to a third gold medal and a time of 44.5.

Through her success at the Olympics and what she chose to do after it, Rudolph helped open doors for future African-American athletes. Upon returning home, she was going to be given a celebration for her accomplishments, but she made sure that it was done on her own terms.  Tennessee Governor Buford Ellington, who, according to ESPN, had been elected as “an old-fashioned segregationist,” planned to take charge of the celebration, but Rudolph refused to attend a segregated event, so her parade and banquet became the first integrated events in her hometown of Clarksville’s history.

Her amazing story inspired some other significant African-American athletes, such as Florence Griffith-Joyner, who won three gold medals in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who won a total of six medals over the span of four different Olympic Games from 1984-1996.

In her post-Olympic years, she coached track at DePauw University, worked as a goodwill ambassador between the U.S. and French West Africa and created the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, a “not-for-profit, community based amateur sports program” which she called her “greatest accomplishment,” according to ESPN.

By persevering through her struggles, Wilma Rudolph had a spectacular athletic career and went on to make an even greater impact through her later work.