Overcoming all the odds to win: Running legend Wilma Glodean Rudolph

Rudolph on course to set the Olympic Record (22.3) during the 200m heats at the Rome Olympics

Wilma Rudolph was an exceptional American track and field athlete who overcame debilitating childhood illnesses and went on to become the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics.

Borm prematurely and sick on June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, she was the 20th of 22 children to parents Ed and Blanche Rudolph, who held jobs as a porter and a cleaner. She went on to become an African-American pioneer of track and field.

But the road to victory was not an easy one for Rudolph. Stricken with polio as a child, she had problems with her left leg and had to wear a brace for over three years. It was with great determination that she was able to overcome the disease as well as her resulting physical disabilities.

Being a sick kid was hard, by the time she was twelve she had survived bouts of polio, scarlet fever and even chickenpox. The Rudolph family used to travel frequently between Clarksville and Nashville to take Wilma to the hospital. The doctors advised massaging her leg for relief, her brothers and sisters took turns massaging her crippled leg every day. Once a week her mother Blanche, a domestic worker, drove her 90 miles roundtrip to a Nashville hospital for therapy. Years of treatment and the determination to be a "normal kid" paid off. Despite whooping cough, measles and chicken pox affecting her, Rudolph was out of her leg braces at age 9 and soon became a budding basketball star.

At the all-African-American Burt High School, Rudolph played on the girls' basketball team, where her coach, C.C. Gray, gave her the nickname, "Skeeter” for her blistering speed. Wilma was a naturally gifted runner and was spotted and recruited by Ed Temple the Tennessee State University track coach. Wilma loved training with Temple so much that she started attending daily college practices while still in high school. Temple's dedication was inspiring. He was a sociology professor at Tennessee State and unpaid coach. Temple drove the team to meets in his own car and had the school track, an unmarked and unsurfaced dirt oval, lined at his own expense.

Temple was not soft with his students, he made the girls run an extra lap for every minute they were late to practice. There is this story where Rudolph once over slept and was late to practice by 30 minutes and was made to run 30 extra laps. She was 30 minutes early the next day. During the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne she was the youngest member of the U.S. team at the age of 16, she went on to win a bronze medal in the sprint relay event that year.

The Black Pearl with her three Olympic Gold medals (1960)

After finishing high school, Rudolph enrolled at Tennessee State University where she trained hard for the next Olympics. Held in Rome, Italy, the 1960 Olympic Games were an amazing time for Rudolph. Wilma set a world record of 11.3 seconds in the 100-meter dash in the semifinals; she also won the 100 in the final round with a time of 11.0. Likewise, she went on to break the Olympic record in the 200-meter dash (23.2 seconds) in the semifinals before winning the 200 (24 seconds) in the final. She was also part of the U.S. team that beat the world record in the 4*100-meter relay (44.4 seconds) in the Olympic semifinals before winning the relay in the final in 44.5 seconds. Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals at a single Olympic Games. The Black Pearl instantly became one of the most popular athletes of the Rome Games and also an international superstar, lauded around the world for her pioneering achievements.

She retired from running when she was 22 years old; she later coached women's track teams and encouraged young people to take up sprinting. Another anecdote from her life is when she returned from Rome, Tennessee Gov. Buford Ellington, "an old-fashioned segregationist," planned to head her welcome home celebration. Rudolph said she would not attend a segregated event. Rudolph's parade and banquet were the first integrated events in her hometown of Clarksville.

Rudolph is remembered as one of the fastest women in track and a great source of inspiration for generations of African-American athletes. She once said, "Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday." Those words epitomize the kind of person she was and how she overcame each and every challenge she faced.

Rudolph shared her remarkable story in 1977 through her autobiography, ‘Wilma Rudolph on Track’ which was a bestseller. Her book was later turned into a TV series. In the 1980s, she was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and established the Wilma Rudolph Foundation to promote amateur athletics. Wilma Rudolph died at the age of 54 on November 12, 1994, near Nashville, Tennessee, losing a battle with brain cancer.

"Believe me, the reward is not so great without the struggle." - Wilma Rudolph pic.twitter.com/CvlzFbO8c2

— NWHM (@womenshistory) September 5, 2015

"When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome." ~Wilma Rudolph ??

— Judy-Anne Goldman (@lacajag) August 25, 2015