Wilma Rudolph was born and raised in Tennessee. She was born prematurely, and as an infant, she suffered from several illnesses, including scarlet fever, pneumonia, and polio that made her temporarily paralyzed at the age of five. During her early years, Rudolph was homeschooled, spending most of her efforts strengthening her leg. She had to wear a leg brace and travel to Nashville for treatments every week. By the age of 12, she overcame her disability and was able to walk without any leg support.
One of Rudolph’s ways to restore her leg strength was playing basketball with her brother. She fell in love with the game, and in high school, she was a starter on the girls’ basketball team, breaking the school’s record in her sophomore year. Her athletics abilities caught the attention of Tennessee State University’s track and field coach. At the age of 14, Rudolph participated in a summer training program at the university and began competing on the collegiate level. In 1956, at the age of 16, she qualified to compete at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, where she won a bronze medal in the 4×100 relay race.
At 18, during her senior year of high school, Rudolph became pregnant and had her first child, but this did not prevent her from attending college and continuing competing. She enrolled at Tennessee State University on a full scholarship, studying Education. She won one race after another, earning numerous gold medals and setting a world record in the 200-meter dash. In the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, she competed in three events (100-meter sprint, 200-meter sprint, and 4 × 100-meter relays), winning first place in all of them and breaking two world records. Rudolph, who became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics, became known as “the fastest woman in the world.”
Following her return to the US, she got invited to compete in various games, including the Drake Relays, the Penn Relays, the New York Athletic Club track events, and the Millrose Games – the first woman to participate. She also won the 100-meter and 4 x 100-meter-relay races at the US-Soviet meet of 1962.
When she was only 22 years old, she retired from track competition. She married her high school sweetheart and the father of her child and returned to the university to finish her degree and began to work as a second-grade teacher.
Rudolph continued to be involved in sports, coaching track at the same high school she had attended, and promoting women in sports throughout the country. She worked with nonprofit organizations that supported children’s athletic development and became a goodwill ambassador for the US State Department. In 1981, Rudolph founded the Wilma Rudolph Foundation for training youth athletes, and in 1987 she became the director of the women’s track program at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, also serving as the consultant on minority affairs for the president of the university.
In July of 1994, Rudolph was diagnosed with brain and throat cancer. She died five months later at the age of 54.
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