Wilma Rudolph
Rudolph in 1960
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| Full name | Wilma Glodean Rudolph | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Nickname(s) | Skeeter The Black Gazelle The Tornado The Black Pearl |
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| Born | June 23, 1940 Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee, United States |
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| Died | November 12, 1994 (aged 54) Brentwood, Tennessee, United States |
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| Residence | Nashville | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 5 ft 11 in (180 cm) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 130 lb (59 kg) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Track and field | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | TSU Tigerbelles, Nashville | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Wilma Glodean Rudolph (June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994) was an American track and field sprinter who competed in the 100 and 200 meters dash. Rudolph was acclaimed the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and competed in the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Games.
At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games. A track and field champion, she elevated women's track to a major presence in the United States. As a member of the black community, she is also regarded as a civil rights and women's rights pioneer. Along with other 1960 Olympic athletes such as Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), Oscar Robertson, and Rafer Johnson, Rudolph became an international star due to the first worldwide television coverage of the Olympics that year.
The upstart sprinter emerged from the 1960 Rome Olympics as "The Tornado, the fastest woman on earth". The Italians nicknamed her La Gazzella Nera ("The Black Gazelle"); to the French she was La Perle Noire ("The Black Pearl").
Rudolph was born prematurely at 4.5 pounds (2.0 kg) on June 23, 1940 in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee, the 20th of twenty two siblings; her father, Ed, was a railway porter and her mother, Blanche, was a maid. Rudolph contracted infantile paralysis (caused by the polio virus) at age four. She recovered, but wore a brace on her left leg and foot (which had become twisted as a result) until she was nine. She was required to wear an orthopedic shoe for support of her foot for another two years. Her family traveled regularly from Clarksville, Tennessee, to Meharry Hospital (now Nashville General Hospital at Meharry) in Nashville, Tennessee, for treatments for her twisted leg. In addition, by the time she was twelve years old she had also survived bouts of polio and scarlet fever.
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