Abebe Bikila was an Ethiopian marathon runner who won gold medals in the 1960 and 1964 Olympic Games. Both times, no one expected him to win. Both times, he set a world record.
In the 1960 Olympics, held in Rome, it seemed impossible for him to win. First of all, he was from Ethiopia, a country in East Africa, and no black African had ever won an Olympic gold medal — in any sport.
Not only that, the week of the race, Bikila’s running shoes fell apart, so he bought new ones. They didn’t feel comfortable and gave him blisters, so he decided to run barefoot. Most people gave him no chance of winning because much of the 26-mile race wasn’t on flat, even surfaces, but on ancient, cobble-stoned streets. There was no way he could run without shoes and win.
To everyone’s amazement, Bikila kept pace with the fastest runners. At about the 16-mile mark, he and another runner began to pull away from the leading pack. The two were still together near the end of the race, but Bikila suddenly sprinted for the finish and beat the other runner by 25 seconds.
Four years later in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, he was wearing shoes and socks. However, it again seemed impossible that Bikila could win. No Olympic marathoner had ever won two gold medals in a row. And more than that, he had suffered an appendicitis about a month before the Games. When he arrived in Tokyo, he hadn’t fully recovered from the surgery and limped as he walked down stairs.
Bikila not only won the race, he finished four minutes ahead of his nearest competitor. He then delighted the crowd by doing some stretching exercises to stay limber as he waited for the second-place runner to show up.
In the 1968 Olympics in Mexico city, many people expected Bikila to win, and he probably would have. However, a week before the race, he developed pain in his left leg and doctors discovered a fracture in his fibula (the smaller of the two bones in the lower leg). He was determined to run the race, so doctors advised him to stay off his feet until then.
Though in great pain, he ran well during the race, but the broken bone caused him to drop out at the 10-mile point.
The following year, Bikila was involved in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. This didn’t weaken his competitive spirit. He began training as a wheel-chair athlete.
In 1970, he participated in archery and table tennis matches, and also won a cross-country sled-dog race in Norway.
On October 25, 1973, Bikila died of a brain hemorrhage, probably resulting from his car accident four years earlier. He was 41. In his home country of Ethiopia, he was given a hero’s funeral.
Fun Facts
• Abebe Bikila was born August 7, 1932, which was the same day that the Los Angeles Olympic marathon was run.
• As a young boy, Abebe played a game called gena. It’s a type of long-distance field hockey played by teams from two different villages. The goalposts were sometimes miles apart.
• At the 1964 Olympics, it seemed so unlikely that Bikila could win, the Japanese orchestra didn’t bother to learn the Ethiopian national anthem.
• When Bikila took the podium to have a gold medal placed around his neck, the orchestra was caught off guard. As the Ethiopian flag was raised, the orchestra, not knowing what else to do, honored him by playing the Japanese national anthem.
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