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.
