Wilma Rudolph: Great athlete

It is sad the passing away of a great and influential sportswoman should receive only a footnote when others far less worthy hog headlines and occupy more column inches than they are worth. The great athlete in question is the American sprinter Wilma Rudolph who died this month from cancer at the prematurely young age of 54. Wilma Rudolph, double sprint champion at the Rome Olympiad of 1960 where she defeated another fine athlete, the Briton Dorothy Hyman in both finals, overcame more adversity than twenty Tonya Hardings or Jennifer Capriatis put together.

Born into a family of 22 where she was twenty-first, Wilma Rudolph suffered polio as a child. She was brought up black and poor in the last dark days of racial segregation in the deep South when her people knew only too well the laughter of the lynch mob and the evil of the Ku Klux Klan.

It is a small privilege of mine that I saw Wilma race at the old White City stadium in London along with that other great member of the Tennessee Tigerbelles women's sprint team and double Olympic champion, Wyomia Tyus. The Rome Olympics in 1960 gave us the pre-doping scandal greatness of Peter Snell of New Zealand, Herb Elliott of Australia, tiny Don Thompson of Britain in the 50 kilometer walk and, of course, the barefoot courage of lean Ethiopian, the Marathon winner Abebe Bikila. Wilma Rudolph was up there with them and, above all, she was on the side of the angels. Farewell to a marvelous athlete.

DAVID JARDIN

Jakarta