- Born
- Died
- Birth nameWilma Glodean Rudolph
- Wilma Glodean Rudolph (June 23, 1940 - November 12, 1994) was an American track and field sprinter, who competed in the 100 and 200 meters dash. Rudolph was considered the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and competed in two Olympic Games, in 1956 and in 1960.
In the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games. A track and field champion, she elevated women's track to a major presence in the United States. As a member of the black community, she is also regarded as a civil rights and women's rights pioneer. Along with other 1960 Olympic athletes such as Cassius Clay (who later became Muhammad Ali), Rudolph became an international star due to the first international television coverage of the Olympics that year.
The powerful sprinter emerged from the 1960 Rome Olympics as "The Tornado, the fastest woman on earth". The Italians nicknamed her La Gazzella Nera ("The Black Gazelle"); to the French she was La Perle Noire ("The Black Pearl").- IMDb Mini Biography By: Dibyayan Chakravorty
- SpousesRobert Eldridge(July 20, 1963 - 1980) (divorced, 4 children)William Ward(October 14, 1961 - May 24, 1963) (divorced)
- As a child she was often so ill--at one time or another she contracted polio, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, chicken pox and double pneumonia--and bedridden so often that it was thought she would never be able to walk. Polio crippled her so badly that she was home-schooled for the first four years because she had to wear a leg brace that made it virtually impossible for her to walk to school.
- Won three Olympic gold medals in 1960 (100-m. dash, 200-m. dash, 4x100-m. relay), and a bronze in 1956 (4x100-m. relay).
- Inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, 1983 (charter member).
- Pictured on a USA 23¢ definitive (regular-issue) stamp in the Distinguished Americans series, issued 14 July 2004 in booklets and sheets.
- Children: Yolanda (born 1958), Djuanna (1964), Robert Jr. (1965), and Xurry (1971).
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