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ENTITY reports on five facts about wilma rudolph

Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at a single Olympics in 1960.

But did you know she wore a leg brace as a child?

Rudolph wasn’t just a woman who does. She excelled.

So, here are five facts about the Olympian that prove nothing can hold a woman back.

1 She was disabled as a child.

Rudolph was a premature baby, weighing only four and a half pounds at birth. Then, as a child, she was paralyzed by polio and was also stricken with double pneumonia and scarlet fever. Doctors told her she would never walk again but with the help of physical therapy and determination, she started walking again at the age of 12.

“My doctors told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother,” Rudolph said.

2 She played basketball in high school.

Once Rudolph regained the ability to walk, she wasted no time before literally jumping into physical activities.

“By the time I was 12,” Rudolph told the Chicago Tribune, “I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything.”

The Olympian was desperate to play basketball for her high school, but the coach refused to let her join the team. The coach did offer to train her for ten minutes every morning, but she was still cut her freshman year.

Eventually, she earned a spot at her high school in Clarksville, Mississippi. But she earned the position when the coach wanted her sister to play on the team. So, her father told the coach she can join if Wilma was allowed to join.

Of course, Rudolph quickly proved her place on the team. In her sophomore year, she scored 803 points in 25 games creating a new state record for a player on a girls’ basketball team. She then started running in track meets. At the age of 14, she garnered the attention of Ed Temple, the women’s track coach at Tennessee State University.

He saw potential in her, so she started training with him during summer breaks. She later attended Tennessee State after high school and majored in education.

3 She was the youngest member of the Olympics’ U.S. track and field team at the time.

In 1956, she qualified for the Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. At the age of 16, she was the youngest member of the team and won a bronze medal in the 400-meter relay.

When she attended college in 1957, she spent all of her free time running. But, she pushed herself a little too far. She was too ill to run all season in 1958. She recovered by 1959 only to end up pulling a muscle at a meet between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Temple supervised her recovery, and she was healed by the time the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Italy came around.

4 She won three gold medals at the 1960 Olympics.

Rudolph didn’t just become the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at a single Olympics, she made sure no one forgot about it. She won both the 100-meter and 200-meter dash by finishing three yards in front of her closest competitor. Rudolph also set a new Olympic record in the 200-meter dash. She also helped her 400-meter relay team win gold.

She immediately became an international star praised all around the world. The French even called the “La Gazelle”

5 Her legacy doesn’t end with the Olympics.

After the 1960 Olympics, she refused to participate in the 1964 Olympics. She was afraid she couldn’t live up to her accomplishments and didn’t want people to assume she was losing her skill. But she didn’t fade out of the spotlight.

She finished college, became a teacher, athletic coach and mother. She was also inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.

The Olympian also wrote her own autobiography titled “Wilma.” She then traveled the country to lecture young men and women in amateur athletics. In 1991, she became an ambassador to the European celebration of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

But her philanthropy doesn’t end there. She started the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, which aimed to promote amateur athletics.

With all of her accomplishments, Rudolph was nothing short of an inspiration. She didn’t just jump over her hurdles, she soared. She died in 1994 from a brain tumor, but her legend keeps her name alive.

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