Athletics at the 1960 Roma Summer Games

Roma was chosen to host the 1960 Olympic Games, and combined new, glittering facilities with some sports held in sites preserved from Ancient Roma. The athletics competition was noteworthy for several outstanding stars, the coming-out of African distance runners, and the failure of the United States in several events in which they were favored. The athletics star of the Games was likely the American female Wilma Rudolph, who won the 100, 200 and anchored the US 4x100 relay team to a gold medal. Tall, lithe, and beautiful, she was heralded in the European press as “La Gazelle Noir.” The decathlon saw perhaps it greatest ever competition with Rafer Johnson outlasting his UCLA teammate and roommate, C. K. Yang from Taiwan, as they finished late in the cool Roman night. During the Olympics, Rudolph began a romance with American sprinter Ray Norton, who was favored to win the 100 and 200 metres. But Norton was emblematic of American troubles on the Roma track. He finished last in the finals of both races, and then ran out of the exchange zone in the final of the 400 relay, causing the American team to be disqualified. Early in the Games, the heaviest of American favorites, high jumper John Thomas, also had difficulty. He was beaten by Soviets Robert’ Shavlaq’adze and Valery Brumel, and earned “only” a bronze medal. The 1960 marathon was unique as the only Olympic marathon that neither started nor ended in the Olympic Stadium. It started later in the afternoon, to protect the runners from the warm Italian weather. It was won by the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, who ran barefoot, and finished in the night, the route lit by soldiers holding torches, beneath the Arch of Constantine. Bikila would return to win the marathon again in 1964 and he was the first of the dominant African distance runners, and some consider him the greatest ever marathoner.