Abebe Bikila Wins Olympic Marathon.

Abebe Bikila Wins Olympic Marathon. On a warm September evening in Rome, Italy, a slender, dark-shirted runner hastened toward the Arch of Constantine. Few of the spectators recognized him as he approached the finish line of the Olympic marathon, but most were surprised when they noticed that he was running barefoot. Two hundred yards ahead of his nearest competitor, Abebe Bikila crossed the finish line. . Abebe Bikila's Marathon Before that race, on the next-to-last night of the 1960 Olympic Games, Abebe Bikila was an obscure runner from Ethiopia, utterly anonymous to the world's sporting press. A little over two hours later, Bikila had established himself as the fastest marathoner in history. He would go on to win, with surprising ease, the 1964 Olympic marathon in Tokyo, Japan. He would suffer a tragic auto accident that would paralyze him from the waist down, and he would die prematurely at age 41. But it was in that one race, at the Rome Olympics, that Bikila became one of the great champions in Olympic history. Since Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia swept the Olympic distance running events in Helsinki, Finland, in 1952, no runner had come forward to dominate international competition. The favorites in 1960 included Sergei Popov of the Soviet Union, owner of the previous fastest marathon time of 2 hours 15 minutes and 17 seconds, and Abdesalem Rhadi of Morocco. So little known was Bikila before the race that the official Olympic program incorrectly listed him as "Bikila Abebe." Before the 1960 Games, he had run only two marathons in his life--both in his native country. At the start, Bikila was lost in the crowd, distinguished only by the fact that he ran without shoes. He moved slowly through the pack, and at 10 km (6.2 mi) he was running easily in third place behind the leaders, Allah Saoudi of Morocco and Arthur Keily of Great Britain. At 20 km (12.43 mi), almost halfway, Rhadi and Bikila took the lead together. They ran stride for stride the rest of the race, until Bikila broke away with only 1000 m (3280 ft) to run. Bikila sprinted easily to the finish, 30 seconds ahead of Rhadi. He was the first man from East Africa to win an Olympic gold medal. The image of the barefoot champion captivated the world, and overnight Bikila became a national hero in Ethiopia. After the race, the world press produced stories claiming that he ran barefoot because his impoverished country could not provide its runners with track shoes. In truth, Bikila had received a new pair of competition shoes only days before the race. Finding them uncomfortable, he decided to run barefoot-as he had many times during training runs at home. After capturing the Olympic marathon title, Bikila almost vanished from international competition. Four years later, at the Tokyo Olympics, he was still recovering from an appendectomy when he toed the starting line (this time wearing shoes). The outcome, however, was never in doubt: Not only did Bikila destroy the field, winning by the largest margin in Olympic history (4 minutes 8 seconds), but he casually loosened up afterward with a session of calisthenics on the Olympic Stadium infield. As of the 1996 Olympic Games no other runner had won two consecutive Olympic marathons. The great Australian distance runner Ron Clarke called Bikila's Tokyo marathon "the greatest performance ever in track and field." At age 36 Bikila came back for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, but a stress fracture in his left leg forced him to drop out of the marathon after 16 km (about 10 mi). A year later Bikila wrecked his car on a road near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. Suffering a broken neck, he was confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. In 1973 Bikila died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Bikila epitomized the athlete who appears from seeming oblivion, achieves greatness on the Olympic stage, and then disappears again. His Olympic marathons galvanized the running world and heralded the era of African dominance in distance running. His later misfortunes lent an air of tragedy to this quiet, dignified man. He is forever captured in Olympic history as a slender figure running barefoot through the streets of Rome. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.