Wilma Rudolph, 1940-1994: "The Fastest Woman in the World"

10 March 2012

President Kennedy chats in his White House office with Wilma Rudolph, the year after she won three gold medals at the Olympic Games in Rome

STEVE EMBER: I’m Steve Ember.

BARBARA KLEIN: And I’m Barbara Klein with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today we tell about Wilma Rudolph, the first American woman to win three gold medals in one Olympics.

(MUSIC)

STEVE EMBER: They called her “the Black Pearl,” “the Black Gazelle” and “the fastest woman in the world.” In nineteen sixty, Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in one Olympics. She was an extraordinary American athlete. She also did a lot to help young athletes succeed.

Wilma Rudolph was born in nineteen forty, in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee. She was born too early and only weighed two kilograms. She had many illnesses when she was very young, including pneumonia and scarlet fever. She also had polio, which damaged her left leg. When she was six years old, she began to wear metal leg braces because she could not use that leg.

BARBARA KLEIN: Wilma Rudolph was born into a very large, poor, African-American family. She was the twentieth of twenty-two children. Since she was sick most of the time, her brothers and sisters all helped to take care of her. They took turns rubbing her crippled leg every night. They also made sure she did not try to take off her leg braces. Every week, Wilma's mother drove her to a special doctor eighty kilometers away. Here, she got physical treatments to help heal her leg.