Early years Rudolph was first introduced to organized sports at Burt High School, the center of Clarksville's African American community. After completing several years of medical treatments to regain the use of her left leg, Rudolph chose to follow in her sister Yvonne's footsteps and began playing basketball in the eighth grade. Rudolph continued to play basketball in high school, where she became a starter on the team and began competing in track. In her sophomore year, Rudolph scored 803 points and set a new record for high school girls' basketball. As a high school sophomore, Rudolph competed at
Alabama's
Tuskegee Institute in her first major track event. Although she lost the race, Rudolph was determined to continue competing and win. Rudolph was defeated in a preliminary heat of the 200-meter race at the Melbourne Olympic Games but ran the third leg of the
4 × 100 m relay. The American team of Rudolph,
Isabelle Daniels,
Mae Faggs, and
Margaret Matthews, all of whom were TSU Tigerbelles, won the
bronze medal, matching the world-record time of 44.9 seconds. The
British team won the silver medal. The Australian team, with the 100- and 200-meter gold medalist
Betty Cuthbert as their anchor leg, won the gold medal in a time of 44.5 seconds. Rudolph was one of the most popular athletes of the 1960 Rome Olympics and emerged from the Olympic Games as "The Tornado, the fastest woman on earth." The Italians nicknamed her "La Gazzella Nera" ("The Black Gazelle"). The French called her "La Perle Noire" ("The Black Pearl"), as well as "La Chattanooga Choo-Choo." Along with other 1960 Olympic athletes such as
Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali),
Oscar Robertson, and
Rafer Johnson, Rudolph became an international star due to the first worldwide television coverage of the Olympics that year. The 1960 Rome Olympics launched her into the public spotlight and the media cast her as America's athletic "leading lady" and a "queen," with praises of Rudolph's athletic accomplishments as well as her feminine beauty and poise.
Post-Olympic career Rudolph returned home to Clarksville after completing a post-games European tour, where she and her Olympic teammates competed in meets in
London,
West Germany, the
Netherlands, and at other venues in Europe. Rudolph's hometown of Clarksville celebrated "Welcome Wilma Day" on October 4, 1960, with a full day of festivities. Governor Buford Ellington had created these plans to welcome Rudolph home with a parade. Ellington was elected because he had old fashioned segregationist beliefs. This was the complete opposite of what Rudolph stood for. Rudolph heard this and refused to attend her own celebration because of it being segregated. Due to the concert of Rudolph not attending her own event, the parade was changed to be integrated. She makes everlasting history by standing up for what she believes in as this marks the first ever integrated event in her hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee. An estimated 1,100 attended the banquet in Rudolph's honor and thousands lined the city streets to watch the parade. Rudolph's gold-medal victories in Rome also "propelled her to become one of the most highly visible black women across the United States and around the world." Her Olympic star status also "gave an enormous boost to the indoor track circuit in the months following the Olympic Games in Rome." In 1961, Rudolph competed in the prestigious,
Los Angeles Invitational indoor track meet, where thousands turned out to watch her run. Besides, Rudolph was invited to compete in
New York Athletic Club track events and became the first woman invited to compete at the Millrose Games. She was also invited to compete at the
Penn Relays and the
Drake Relays, among others. Following Rudolph's Olympic victories, the United States Information Agency made a 10-minute documentary film,
Wilma Rudolph: Olympic Champion (1961), to highlight her accomplishments on the track. Rudolph's appearance in 1960 on
To Tell the Truth, an American television game show, and later as a guest on
The Ed Sullivan Show also helped promote her status as an iconic sports star. In 1961, Rudolph married William Ward, a North Carolina College at Durham track team member; In the interim, Rudolph retired from track competition at age 22, following victories in the 100-meter and 4 × 100-meter-relay races at the U.S.–
Soviet meet at Stanford University in 1962. At the time of her retirement, Rudolph was still the world record-holder in the 100-meter (11.2 seconds set on July 19, 1961), 200-meter (22.9 seconds set on July 9, 1960), and 4 × 100-meter-relay events. She had also won seven national AAU sprint titles and set the women's indoor track record of 6.9 seconds in the 60-yard dash. As Rudolph explained it, she retired at the peak of her athletic career because Rudolph wanted to leave the sport while still at her best. As such, Rudolph did not compete at the
1964 Summer Olympic Games in
Tokyo, Japan, In May 1963, a few weeks after returning from Africa, Rudolph participated in a civil rights protest in her hometown of Clarksville to desegregate one of the city's restaurants. Within a short time, the mayor announced that the city's public facilities, including its restaurants, would become fully integrated. Rudolph also married Robert Eldridge, who had fathered her child when she was in high school, later that year. The couple had three additional children, but divorced after 17 years of marriage. ==Later years==