On this day 52 years ago, Abebe Bikila became the first-ever sub-Saharan African to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games. Just before the Ethiopian team was due to fly to Rome for the Olympics, one of the team members broke his ankle, and Abebe, a member of Ethiopia’s Imperial Bodyguard, was called in as a replacement. The shoes he was given for the marathon in Rome were uncomfortable, so he decided to run in bare feet.
The marathon race began in the warm mid-afternoon. Abebe settled in at the back of the leading pack as the race went past the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus and along the Via Cristoforo Colombo before heading back via the Appian Way as darkness fell, to finish at the Arch of Constantine. In the 1930s the Italians had invaded Ethiopia, but at the 1960 Rome Olympics Ethiopia invaded Italy as Abebe drew away from the other runners to win in world record time, smashing the Olympic record by almost 8 minutes.
Four years later, Abebe was selected in Ethiopia’s team for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, but collapsed with appendicitis just 40 days before the games. With no time to recover after his operation, he ran in the marathon anyway, and won again, setting another world record. In 1969 he was severely injured in a car accident, and in 1973 he died of a cerebral haemorrhage resulting from that accident.