50 Fun Facts About Wilma Rudolph

At which Olympic Games did Wilma Rudolph win her three gold medals?

She won the 100 metres, the 200 metres and the 4 x 100 relay, becoming the first American woman to take three golds at one Games.

Which childhood disease left Rudolph wearing a leg brace until she was 12?

Polio, caught at about five, weakened her left leg and foot; she had also survived double pneumonia and scarlet fever, and her family massaged the leg daily until she could walk unaided.

Rudolph was born prematurely in 1940 in Saint Bethlehem, now part of which Tennessee city?

Clarksville, in Montgomery County near the Kentucky line, absorbed the Saint Bethlehem community where she was born on 23 June 1940; the city later named a boulevard after her and raised a statue.

Rudolph was the 20th of how many children from her father's two marriages?

Her siblings later gave her massage treatments four times a day to help her weakened leg.

Rudolph and her mother took weekly bus trips for treatment at which Black medical college in Nashville?

Meharry Medical College, the Black medical school in Nashville, treated her leg with heat and water therapy; she and her mother made the roughly 50-mile bus trip each week because local care was closed to African Americans.

What nickname did Rudolph's high school coach C. C. Gray give her because she moved so fast?

Skeeter, short for mosquito, was coach C. C. Gray's name for her: he said she was little, fast and always in his way, and the nickname stuck through her school years.

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

Basketball came before track: she followed her older sister Yvonne onto the Burt High School team in eighth grade and earned all-state honours as a guard.

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

He coached the Tigerbelles for 44 years and led the US Olympic women's track team in 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.

After her first summer camp, Rudolph won all nine events she entered at an AAU meet in which city?

Philadelphia hosted the 1956 AAU meet where she won all nine events she entered; she had earlier lost badly at the Tuskegee Relays in Alabama and vowed to keep competing.

How old was Rudolph at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, as the youngest member of the US team?

At 16 she was the youngest member of the US track and field team in Melbourne, still a junior at Burt High School; she went out in her individual heat but ran in the relay final.

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

Bronze: she ran for an all-Tennessee State quartet that finished third behind Australia and Great Britain in the Melbourne relay final, her only medal of those Games.

In which event did Wilma Rudolph set an eight-year world record at the 1960 US Olympic trials?

200 m: at the 1960 Olympic trials in Abilene, Texas, she ran 22.9 seconds, a world record that stood for eight years, while still a Tennessee State sophomore.

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, the 'Fulton Flash' from Missouri, won the women's 100 metres in 1936; no American woman took the title again until Rudolph, 24 years later.

What Olympic record time did Rudolph set in the opening heat of the 200 metres in Rome?

Her 23.2 seconds in the opening heat went into the books as the Olympic record; she then won the final on a wet track in a slower 24.0, four-tenths clear of Germany's Jutta Heine.

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

Anchor: taking a fumbled final pass from Lucinda Williams, she started behind Germany's Jutta Heine and ran her down on the home straight to win.

What world record time did the US women's team run in the Rome relay semifinal?

44.4 seconds: Martha Hudson, Lucinda Williams, Barbara Jones and Rudolph, all from Tennessee State, set the mark in the semifinal and then won the final in 44.5 despite a poor last exchange.

The Rome track events took place on what kind of surface at the Stadio Olimpico?

Cinder: the Stadio Olimpico track was a traditional crushed-cinder surface, as every Olympic track was until Mexico City introduced a synthetic one in 1968; Rome's athletics were run in intense late-summer heat.

The Italians gave Rudolph which nickname after Rome?

La Gazzella Nera, the Black Gazelle, was the Italian press's name for her after her three Rome golds; the French press countered with La Perle Noire, the Black Pearl.

The French nicknamed Rudolph La Perle Noire and, after a famous song, La what?

Chattanooga Choo-Choo, borrowed from the 1941 Glenn Miller hit, was the French press's tribute to a Tennessee sprinter; the American press preferred The Tornado, the fastest woman on earth.

Rudolph became a global star partly because 1960 was the first Olympics with what?

Worldwide TV coverage began with Rome, the inaugural Games to be televised internationally; CBS bought the American rights and flew tape to New York nightly, so her three wins reached viewers across Europe and America.

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 4 October 1960 became the earliest integrated public event in the town's history.

Rudolph became the first woman invited to compete at which famous indoor track meet?

Her stardom gave a huge boost to the indoor circuit in the months after Rome.

Which government body made the 1961 ten-minute documentary Wilma Rudolph: Olympic Champion?

The US Information Agency, Washington's Cold War public-diplomacy arm, made the ten-minute film for overseas audiences in 1961; she also appeared on To Tell the Truth and The Ed Sullivan Show.

In which year did Rudolph run her last races, at a US-Soviet meet at Stanford?

1962: at the USA-USSR dual meet in Stanford Stadium that July she won the 100 metres and ran on the winning relay, then retired with her records intact, wanting to leave the sport at her best.

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.

What was Rudolph's world-record time for the 100 metres, set on July 19, 1961?

11.2 seconds, run in Stuttgart on 19 July 1961, took a tenth off the world record and stood for four years; she also held the women's indoor 60-yard mark of 6.9 seconds.

In 1963 Rudolph made a month-long goodwill trip for the State Department to which region?

West Africa: as a State Department goodwill ambassador in 1963 she attended the Friendship Games in Dakar, Senegal, and toured Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Upper Volta, meeting young athletes.

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

Within a short time the mayor announced that all the city's public facilities would be integrated.

What degree did Rudolph earn from Tennessee State in 1963?

Elementary education was her bachelor's degree, completed in May 1963; the track programme's work-study scholarship required two hours of campus work a day to pay for it.

After retiring, Wilma Rudolph taught which grade at Cobb Elementary, her childhood school?

Second grade was her class at Cobb Elementary School, where she had been a pupil herself; she also coached the girls' track team at Burt High School, her alma mater.

Which future boxing legend pursued Rudolph around the Olympic village in Rome?

Muhammad Ali, then an 18-year-old light-heavyweight boxing as Cassius Clay, won his own gold in Rome and trailed the sprint champion around the Olympic village, to her amusement.

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.

In 1981 Rudolph founded a foundation to train youth athletes, based in which city?

Indianapolis was home to the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, the non-profit she set up in 1981 to coach and mentor young athletes; she lived in the city for several years and co-hosted a local television show.

Rudolph worked as a TV sports commentator for ABC at which Olympics?

Los Angeles 1984 saw her working as a commentator for ABC Sports; she had been a publicist for Universal Studios and from 1992 served as a vice president of Baptist Hospital in Nashville.

Rudolph died in 1994 at just 54 from which illness?

She was diagnosed in July 1994, shortly after her mother's death, and died in Brentwood near Nashville that November.

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

The top US amateur athlete of the year receives the Sullivan Award from the AAU; she was only the third woman to win it, and was also AP Female Athlete of the Year in 1960 and 1961.

The Women's Sports Foundation gave its first Wilma Rudolph Courage Award in 1996 to which athlete?

Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the heptathlon and long jump champion, received the inaugural Wilma Rudolph Courage Award in 1996; the foundation gives it to a sportswoman who shows extraordinary courage in overcoming adversity.

A former American high school in which European city was renamed the Wilma Rudolph Oberschule in 2000?

The building had been Berlin American High School until US troops withdrew in 1994.

The 2004 US postage stamp honouring Rudolph had what face value?

23 cents was the face value of the stamp issued on 14 July 2004, the fifth in the Distinguished Americans series; it carried the postcard rate of the day.

Where did Sports Illustrated rank Rudolph among Tennessee's greatest 20th-century athletes?

First: Sports Illustrated's 1999 state-by-state rankings placed her at the top of its list of Tennessee's 50 greatest 20th-century sports figures.

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

Betty Cuthbert, who took both individual sprint titles in Melbourne, ran the last leg as Australia clocked a world record 44.5 seconds; Great Britain finished second and the United States third.

How much did Wilma Rudolph weigh when she was born prematurely in June 1940?

4.5 pounds was her weight at birth on 23 June 1940, a premature baby in a large family; she survived double pneumonia and scarlet fever as a small child before the illness that weakened her leg.

What was the occupation of Rudolph's father, Ed?

Railway porter was Ed Rudolph's job, supplemented by handyman work; her mother Blanche cleaned white families' homes as a maid, so there was little money for doctors.

What time did the US team, with Rudolph aboard, run in the 1956 Melbourne relay final?

44.9 seconds placed the United States third behind Australia's world-record 44.5 and Great Britain's 44.7; all four American runners came from Tennessee State.

At the 1959 Pan American Games in Chicago, Rudolph won silver in the 100 metres and gold in what?

The 4 x 100 relay brought her Pan American gold in Chicago in 1959, alongside a silver in the 100 metres; she had enrolled at Tennessee State the previous year.

Which Tennessee governor planned the homecoming parade that Rudolph insisted be integrated?

Buford Ellington, elected governor in 1958 as a self-described 'old-fashioned segregationist', planned to lead the celebration; some 1,100 people attended the banquet and thousands lined the parade route.

Rudolph later joined which Indiana university as director of its women's track programme?

DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, made her director of its women's track programme and an adviser to the university's president on minority affairs.

Where did ESPN rank Rudolph among the greatest athletes of the 20th century?

Forty-first was her place on ESPN's SportsCentury list of the 50 greatest athletes of the 20th century, compiled in 1999; the Women's Sports Foundation had earlier named her one of the five greatest American women athletes.