Wilma Rudolph facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Wilma Rudolph

Rudolph in 1960
Personal information
Birth name	Wilma Glodean Rudolph
Full name	Wilma Glodean Rudolph
Nickname(s)	Skeeter The Black Gazelle The Tornado The Black Pearl The Flash The Track Star
Born	(1940-06-23)June 23, 1940 Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee, U.S.
Died	November 12, 1994(1994-11-12) (aged 54) Brentwood, Tennessee, U.S.
Height	5 ft 11 in
Weight	130 lb
Sport
Country	United States
Sport	Track and field
Club	TSU Tigerbelles, Nashville
Retired	1962
Medal record Women's athletics Representing the  United States Olympic Games Gold 1960 Rome 100 m Gold 1960 Rome 200 m Gold 1960 Rome 4 × 100 m relay Bronze 1956 Melbourne 4 × 100 m relay

Wilma Glodean Rudolph (born June 23, 1940, died November 12, 1994) was an amazing American sprinter. When she was a child, she had a serious illness called polio, but she didn't let it stop her. She grew up to be an Olympic champion in track and field and set world records! People all over the world knew her name.

Wilma competed in two Olympic Games. In the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, she won a bronze medal in a team race. This race was called the 4 × 100-meter relay. But it was at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, where she really shined. She won three gold medals! She won the 100-meter race, the 200-meter race, and was part of the winning 4 × 100-meter relay team. This made her the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at one Olympics. Everyone called her the fastest woman in the world!

The 1960 Olympics were shown on TV all around the globe. This made Wilma a huge international star. Other famous athletes from those Olympics included Cassius Clay (who later became Muhammad Ali) and Oscar Robertson.

Wilma became a hero for many people. She was especially inspiring for Black athletes and female athletes. Her success helped make women's track and field more popular in the United States. She was also seen as someone who fought for civil rights (equal rights for all people) and women's rights. In 1962, Wilma decided to stop competing in races. She was at the top of her game, holding world records in the 100-meter, 200-meter, and 4 × 100-meter relay races. After the Olympics, she graduated from Tennessee State University in 1963. She then became a teacher and coach. Sadly, Wilma Rudolph passed away from cancer in 1994. But people still remember her incredible achievements. There are books, movies, and even a U.S. postage stamp made to honor her.

Wilma's Early Life and School Days

Wilma Rudolph was born very small, weighing only 4.5 pounds (2.0 kg). This happened on June 23, 1940, in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee. This town is now part of Clarksville. She was the 20th of 22 kids in her family! Her dad, Ed, worked on the railway and did other jobs. Her mom, Blanche, worked as a maid.

When Wilma was little, she got sick a lot. She had serious illnesses like pneumonia and scarlet fever. When she was five, she got polio. This disease made her left leg weak. For many years, Wilma couldn't use her leg properly. She had to wear a leg brace. In the 1940s, it was hard for African American families in Clarksville to get good medical care. So, Wilma's parents took her to a special hospital. It was in Nashville, Tennessee, called Meharry Medical College. This hospital was about 50 miles (80 km) away from their home.

Every week for two years, Wilma and her mom traveled by bus to Nashville for treatment. At home, her family members massaged her leg four times a day. She also wore a special shoe to support her foot. Thanks to all this care, Wilma got stronger. By the time she was 12, she could walk without her brace or special shoe!

Because she was often sick, Wilma missed kindergarten and first grade. She was taught at home instead. She started second grade at Cobb Elementary School in Clarksville in 1947. She was seven years old then. Later, she went to Clarksville's all-black Burt High School. There, Wilma discovered she was great at basketball and track. During her last year of high school, Wilma had a daughter named Yolanda in 1958. A few weeks later, she started college at Tennessee State University (TSU) in Nashville. In college, Wilma kept running track. She also joined a group called the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. In 1963, Wilma graduated from TSU with a degree in education. She paid for college by working on campus for two hours a day. This was part of a scholarship program.

Starting Her Amazing Sports Journey

Discovering Her Talent

Wilma first got into organized sports at Burt High School. This school was an important place for the African American community in Clarksville. After years of medical treatments for her leg, Wilma wanted to be active. She decided to play basketball in eighth grade, just like her older sister Yvonne. Wilma was a natural! She became a star player on her high school basketball team. She also started running track. In her second year of high school, she scored 803 points in basketball. This set a new record for girls! Her high school coach, C. C. Gray, nicknamed her "Skeeter" (like a mosquito) because she was so fast.

One day, Ed Temple, the track and field coach from Tennessee State, saw Wilma play. He knew right away that she was a special athlete. Wilma had already tried track for a couple of years at Burt High. She mostly did it to stay busy between basketball seasons. When she was in tenth grade, she competed in her first big track event. This was at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. She didn't win, but it made her want to try even harder.

Coach Temple invited 14-year-old Wilma to join his summer training program at Tennessee State. After the camp, Wilma entered an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) track meet in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She won all nine events she competed in! She kept training with Coach Temple at TSU while she was still in high school. She raced with TSU's women's track team, called the Tigerbelles, for two more years. Then she started college there in 1958.

1956 Summer Olympics: A Taste of Victory

When Wilma was 16 and still in high school, she went to the 1956 U.S. Olympic track and field team trials. These were in Seattle, Washington. She qualified to run in the 200-meter race at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia! Wilma was the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team. Four other TSU Tigerbelles also made the team.

At the Melbourne Olympics, Wilma didn't win her individual 200-meter race. But she ran in the 4 × 100-meter relay team. The American team, made up of Wilma and her TSU teammates Isabelle Daniels, Mae Faggs, and Margaret Matthews, won the bronze medal! They tied the world-record time of 44.9 seconds. The team from Great Britain won silver, and Australia won gold. When Wilma came home to Tennessee, she showed her classmates her bronze medal. She decided then that she wanted to win a gold medal at the next Olympics in Rome, Italy.

In 1958, Wilma started college at Tennessee State. Ed Temple was still her coach. The next year, at the Pan American Games in Chicago, Illinois, she won a silver medal in the 100-meter race. She also won a gold medal in the 4 × 100-meter relay with her teammates Isabelle Dan, Barbara Joe, and Lucinda Williams. Wilma also won the AAU 200-meter race in 1959. She kept winning it for the next four years. She was a champion in indoor track events too!

1960 Summer Olympics: Becoming a Legend

Rudolph wins the women's 100-meter dash at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.

While Wilma was in her second year of college, she competed in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials. These were at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. There, she set a world record in the 200-meter dash. This record wasn't broken for eight years! She also qualified for the 1960 Summer Olympics in the 100-meter dash.

At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, Wilma competed in three events. These were the 100-meter sprint, the 200-meter sprint, and the 4 × 100-meter relay. The races were held on a cinder track (a track made of ash and clay) in Rome's Stadio Olimpico. Wilma won a gold medal in every single one of these events! She became the first American woman to win three gold medals in one Olympics.

Wilma ran the finals in the 100-meter dash in 11.0 seconds. This time was helped by the wind. (The record-setting time was not counted as a world record because the wind was too strong.) Still, Wilma became the first American woman to win a gold medal in the 100-meter race since Helen Stephens in the 1936 Summer Olympics. Wilma won another gold medal in the 200-meter dash with a time of 24.0 seconds. She had set a new Olympic record of 23.2 seconds in an earlier race. After these wins, she was known around the world as "the fastest woman in history."

On September 7, 1960, the temperature was very hot, around 40 °C (104 °F). Thousands of fans filled the stadium. Wilma teamed up with her Olympic teammates from Tennessee State—Martha Hudson, Lucinda Williams, and Barbara Jones. They won the 4 × 100-meter relays with a time of 44.5 seconds. They had already set a world record of 44.4 seconds in the semifinals. Wilma ran the anchor leg (the last part) for the American team in the finals. She nearly dropped the baton after a pass from Williams. But she managed to overtake Germany's anchor runner to win the relay in a very close race. Wilma had a special reason to want this victory. She wanted to honor Jesse Owens, the famous American athlete and star of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, who had been her inspiration.

Wilma was one of the most popular athletes of the 1960 Rome Olympics. She became known as "The Tornado, the fastest woman on earth." The Italians nicknamed her "La Gazzella Nera" ("The Black Gazelle"). The French called her "La Perle Noire" ("The Black Pearl"). Because these Olympics were the first to be shown on television worldwide, Wilma became an international star. Other famous athletes included Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), Oscar Robertson, and Rafer Johnson. The media loved her, praising her athletic skills as well as her beauty and calm manner.

Life After Olympic Glory

Rudolph at the finish line during the 50-yard dash at the track meet at Madison Square Garden in 1961

After the Olympics, Wilma and her teammates toured Europe. They competed in track meets in London, West Germany, the Netherlands, and other places. Rudolph's hometown of Clarksville celebrated "Welcome Wilma Day" on October 4, 1960. This was a full day of parties. Originally, the governor of Tennessee, Buford Ellington, planned for the parade to be segregated. This meant Black people and white people would have to be separate. Wilma believed this was wrong. She said she wouldn't come if the event was segregated. Because she stood up for her beliefs, the parade was changed to be integrated. This meant everyone could celebrate together. This was the first ever integrated event in Clarksville, and Wilma made history! About 1,100 people attended a special dinner for Wilma. Thousands lined the streets to watch the parade.

Wilma's gold-medal wins made her one of the most famous Black women in the United States and around the world. Her Olympic stardom also made indoor track events much more popular. In 1961, Rudolph competed in the important Los Angeles Invitational indoor track meet. Thousands of people came to watch her run. She was also invited to compete in New York Athletic Club track events. She became the first woman invited to compete at the Millrose Games.

The United States Information Agency made a 10-minute movie, Wilma Rudolph: Olympic Champion (1961). This film showed her achievements. Wilma's appearance in 1960 on To Tell the Truth, an American TV game show, and later as a guest on The Ed Sullivan Show also helped make her an iconic sports star.

In 1961, Rudolph married William Ward. She retired from track competition at age 22. This was after winning the 100-meter and 4 × 100-meter-relay races at a U.S.–Soviet meet in 1962. When she retired, Rudolph still held world records in the 100-meter, 200-meter, and 4 × 100-meter-relay events. She explained that she wanted to leave the sport while she was still at her best. Because of this, Rudolph did not compete at the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

After retiring from competition, Rudolph finished her education at Tennessee State. She earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education in 1963. That same year, she traveled for a month to West Africa. She was a goodwill ambassador for the U.S. State Department. Rudolph represented the U.S. at the 1963 Friendship Games in Dakar, Senegal. She also visited Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). There, she attended sports events, visited schools, and was a guest on TV and radio shows.

In May 1963, just after returning from Africa, Rudolph took part in a civil rights protest in her hometown of Clarksville. The protest was to desegregate (end racial separation at) one of the city's restaurants. Soon after, the mayor announced that the city's public places, including its restaurants, would become fully integrated. Later that year, Rudolph married Robert Eldridge, who was the father of her child from high school. They had three more children.

Wilma's Life After Running

Wilma didn't earn much money as an amateur athlete. So, she shifted to a career in teaching and coaching after she retired from track. She started as a second-grade teacher at Cobb Elementary School, where she had gone as a child. She also coached track at Burt High School, where she had been a student-athlete herself.

Over the years, Rudolph moved several times. She lived in places like Chicago, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Detroit, Michigan. Rudolph's autobiography (a book about her own life), Wilma: The Story of Wilma Rudolph, was published in 1977. It was used as the basis for other books and movies. By 2014, at least 21 books about Rudolph's life had been published for children.

Besides teaching, Rudolph worked for non-profit groups and government projects. These supported sports for American children. In Boston, Massachusetts, she was involved in the federal Job Corps program. In 1981, Rudolph started and led the Wilma Rudolph Foundation. This was a non-profit group in Indianapolis, Indiana, that trains young athletes. Later, she joined DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, as director of its women's track program.

Rudolph also hosted a local television show in Indianapolis. She worked as a publicist for Universal Studios. She was also a TV sports commentator for ABC Sports during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California. In 1987, she lit the cauldron (a special flame) to open the Pan American Games in Indianapolis. This was in front of 80,000 people. In 1992, two years before she passed away, Rudolph became a vice president at Nashville's Baptist Hospital.

Family Life

Wilma Rudolph had four children. Her first daughter, Yolanda, was born in 1958. She also had a daughter, Djuanna (born in 1964), and two sons, Robert Jr. (born in 1965) and Xurry (born in 1971).

Remembering Wilma: Her Death and Lasting Impact

In July 1994, shortly after her mother's death, Rudolph was diagnosed with brain cancer. She also had throat cancer. Her condition got worse quickly. Rudolph died on November 12, 1994, at her home in Brentwood, Tennessee. She was only 54 years old.

Wilma Rudolph's legacy is her effort to overcome big challenges. These included childhood illnesses and a physical disability. She became the fastest woman runner in the world in 1960. At the 1960 Rome Olympics, Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics. Rudolph was one of the first role models for Black and female athletes. Her Olympic success greatly helped women's track in the United States. Rudolph's fame also helped break down gender barriers at previously all-male track and field events.

Besides her athletic achievements, Rudolph is remembered for helping young people. This includes starting and leading the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, which trains youth athletes. Her life is remembered in many books, especially for young readers. Rudolph's life has also been featured in documentary films and TV movies:

• Wilma Rudolph: Olympic Champion (1961), was a short film by the United States Information Agency about her track success.
• In 1977, Wilma (also known as The Story of Wilma Rudolph), a TV movie based on her autobiography, was made. It starred Shirley Jo Finney as Rudolph. It also featured Cicely Tyson and Denzel Washington in one of his early roles.
• In 2015, a UK film company made three short inspirational dramas for schools. One was about Rudolph's life, called Unlimited.

Awards and Special Recognitions

Rudolph receiving a Fraternal Order of Eagles Award with baseball player Roger Maris (left)

Wilma Rudolph was named United Press International Athlete of the Year (1960). She was also named Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year (1960 and 1961). She received the James E. Sullivan Award (1960) for the top amateur athlete in the United States. She also got the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Award (1962). In addition, Rudolph had a private meeting with President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office. Rudolph was also honored with the National Sports Award (1993).

Rudolph was inducted into several women's and sports halls of fame:

• Black Sports Hall of Fame (1973)
• U.S. National Track and Field Hall of Fame (1974)
• U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame (1983)
• National Women's Hall of Fame (1994)
• National Black Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame (2001)

In 1984, the Women's Sports Foundation selected Rudolph as one of the five greatest women athletes in the United States. In 1996, the foundation presented its first Wilma Rudolph Courage Award to Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

In 1994, a part of U.S. Route 79 was named Wilma Rudolph Boulevard in Clarksville. On November 21, 1995, a black marble marker was placed at her grave site. In April 1996, a life-size bronze statue of Rudolph was put up in Clarksville. In 2012, the city of Clarksville, Tennessee built the Wilma Rudolph Event Center. The life-size bronze statue was moved there and stands near the entrance.

On December 2, 1980, Tennessee State University named its indoor track in Rudolph's honor. On August 11, 1995, Tennessee State University dedicated a new, six-story dormitory as the Wilma G. Rudolph Residence Center. In 1997, Governor Don Sundquist proclaimed June 23 as "Wilma Rudolph Day" in Tennessee.

The December 29, 1999, issue of Sports Illustrated ranked Rudolph first on its list of the top 50 greatest sports figures of the twentieth-century from Tennessee. ESPN ranked Rudolph forty-first in its listing of the twentieth century's greatest athletes.

After U.S. troops left Berlin in 1994, Berlin American High School was turned over to the people of Berlin. The school was renamed the "Wilma Rudolph Oberschule" in her honor in the summer of 2000.

On July 14, 2004, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 23-cent postage stamp in recognition of Rudolph's accomplishments.

See also

In Spanish: Wilma Rudolph para niños