Abebe Bikila

Abebe Bikila was born in the village of Jato, Shewa province, on the day of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic marathon. Moving to Addis Ababa in 1952, Bikila enlisted in the Imperial Bodyguard of Emperor Haile Selassie. Coached by Swedish-Finnish trainer Onni Niskanen, Bikila developed extraordinary aerobic efficiency running in the thin air of the Ethiopian highlands.

Added to the Ethiopian Olympic team at the last minute for the 1960 Rome Games, Bikila found that the running shoes provided by the team sponsor gave him blisters. Resolving to run barefoot—as he had trained his whole life—Bikila ran through the torchlit Roman night alongside the ancient Appian Way. Passing the Arch of Constantine, near the obelisk of Axum stolen from Ethiopia by Mussolini's troops twenty-five years earlier, Bikila surged away to win gold in a world record time of 2:15:16.2. When asked why he ran barefoot, he replied: 'I wanted the world to know that my country, Ethiopia, has always won with heroism and determination.'

Four years later at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, just forty days after undergoing an emergency appendectomy, Bikila ran in shoes and completely dismantled the field, breaking his own world record (2:12:11.2) by over four minutes to become the first runner in history to win two Olympic marathons. Paralyzed from the waist down following a car accident in 1969, he continued competing in disabled archery until his death in 1973, where 75,000 mourners attended his state funeral.