Adebe Bikila went down in Olympic history when he won the gold medal in the marathon event at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. The feat was impressive already, as Bikila was the first sub-Saharan African to win Olympic gold, but was made even more incredible by the fact that he ran the entire race barefoot – having been added to the Olympic team at the last minute as a replacement for Wami Biratu, who had broken his ankle, there weren’t any shoes left in his size when Biila went to try on shoes with Olympic shoe sponsor, Adidas. When asked about his decision to run barefoot after the race, Bikila said, “I wanted the whole world to know that my country, Ethiopia, has always won with determination and heroism.”
Source: Mereja.com
At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie won all of the races he competed in, ranking first in the world in the 5,000m and 10,000m, and becoming only the third man in history to successfully defend an Olympic title in the 10,000m event. The event was particularly exciting, as Gebrselassie’s victory came down to the final 200m kick, which he blasted out in an incredible 25.4 seconds. Gebrselassie had hoped to continue his streak at the 2004 Athens Games, but an inflamed Achilles tendon forced him to miss crucial training time, and he was unable to defend his title again, finishing in fifth place.
Though he is now infamous for being on trial for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, Oscar Pistorius first shot into the limelight when he became the first double leg amputee to participate in the able-bodied Olympics at the 2012 London Games. Though he did not earn a medal, Pistorius has taken numerous gold medals at the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Paralympic Games, held in Athens, Beijing, and London, respectively.
Eric Moussambani was set to represent Equatorial Guinea in the 100m freestyle swimming event at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, despite only learning to swim less than a year earlier. After the two other competitors in Moussambani’s qualifying heat false-started and were disqualified, judges decided that Moussambani still had to compete in a race against the clock and make the qualifying time of 1 minute and 10 seconds. Moussambani had originally thought he would be competing in a 50m race, and had never trained for the 100m distance, and it quickly became clear to the crowd that he was struggling. Though his flailing technique clocked his time at 1 minute and 52.72 seconds, 43 seconds past the qualifying time (and the slowest time in Olympic history), Moussambani became an icon of never giving up, and proving that anything is possible.
Kenyan athletes have become known for their domination in long distance running events, but the trend first began with Kenyan runner Wilson Kiprugut. Kiprugut won the bronze medal in the 800m event at the 1964 Tokyo Games, becoming the first Kenyan athlete to ever win an Olympic medal, and setting the stage for his fellow countrymen to win countless medals over the years to come.
In 1972 and 1976, a large contingent of African nations pressured the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ban New Zealand from the Olympic Games for their national team’s rugby tour of apartheid South Africa. The IOC refused to do so, maintaining that rugby was not an Olympic sport, the New Zealand Rugby Union was not affiliated with the New Zealand Olympic Committee and thus should not be banned. Twenty-six African countries, out of the 28 African invitees, withdrew from the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games after the IOC failed to comply with their requests.
South African Zola Budd was not going to be able to compete in the 1984 Olympics due to the IOC’s ban on South Africa and its apartheid government, until David English, the editor of English newspaper, “The Mail,” managed to get her British citizenship in just three weeks. She would go on to be involved in one of the most controversial races in Olympic history, after a collision with American running legend Mary Decker left Decker on the ground and out of the race. Budd would go on to finish seventh in the race after faltering after the incident, and dealing with increasingly antagonistic booing from the crowd. But Budd left no doubt to spectators about her ability, despite her diminutive size and barefoot running style.
Maria Mutola, a Mozambican track star nicknamed “The Maputo Express,” has the distinctive honor of competing at six successive Olympic Games, only the fourth person in the world to do so. Mutola competed at her first Olympics in 1988 at the age of 15, but didn’t win her first Olympic gold medal until the 2000 Sydney Olympics in the 800m event. After winning gold, and beating out rivals Stephanie Graf and Kelly Holmes, Mutola returned to Mozambique to massive crowds of cheering fans, and even had a road renamed after her in Maputo. Mutola went on to compete at the 2004 and 2008 Games as well.
In 2012, Somali-born British runner Mohammed “Mo” Farah took gold in both the 10,000m and 5,000m events at the London Olympics. The look of astonishment on his face after winning his second gold, in the midst of his “Mobot” celebration pose pictured above, became an iconic image of the Games, and endeared him to fans and athletes alike.
During the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Ethiopian runner Derartu Tulu won the gold medal in the 10,000m event, earning her the title of the first black African woman to win an individual gold medal. As if that were not history-making enough, Tulu held hands with silver medalist Elana Mayer from South Africa for their victory lap. As apartheid was coming to an end in South Africa and racial tensions remained high, the move constituted an enormous moment that served as a symbol of hope for racial unity in Africa.
