On This Date: Abebe Bikila Runs Barefoot Past His Country's Stolen Obelisk (Sept. 10, 1960)

On this date in 1960, at 5:30 in the evening, 69 runners left the Capitoline Hill in Rome and set out on an Olympic marathon designed to finish after dark. Hundreds of Italian soldiers lined the route holding torches. Twenty-six miles later, a 28-year-old Ethiopian corporal came out of that torchlight and through the Arch of Constantine in 2:15:16.2 — a world best — having run the entire distance barefoot.

Abebe Bikila had not been supposed to be there at all. He was a last-minute addition to Ethiopia's team, replacing a runner who'd hurt himself playing football. He was the first Black African to win an Olympic gold medal, and he did it on the streets of the country that had invaded his own.

Why He Ran Barefoot

Let's kill the myth first, because the truth is better. Bikila did not run barefoot because he'd never worn shoes — he trained both ways in Ethiopia, shod and unshod. What happened in Rome was simpler and more human: his own running shoes wore out in the last days before the race, and the replacement pair he was given raised blisters on his feet. So he made a race-day decision to run the way he knew was comfortable.

That's it. The greatest barefoot performance in sports history came down to a man deciding, hours before the biggest race of his life, that new shoes hurt.

The Obelisk

Here's where the story stops being about running.

In 1935, Mussolini's Italy invaded Ethiopia and occupied it until 1941. In 1937, Italian forces cut down the Obelisk of Axum — a 1,700-year-old Ethiopian monument — hauled it to Rome, and re-erected it at Piazza di Porta Capena, in front of the Ministry of Italian Africa. They unveiled it on the anniversary of Mussolini's March on Rome. Italy signed a treaty promising to give it back in 1947. It was still standing in that square in 1960. (It didn't go home until 2005.)

The 1960 Olympic marathon route ran right past it — twice. And roughly 500 meters from the finish, at the very sight of his country's stolen obelisk, Bikila lengthened his stride and broke away from Morocco's Rhadi Ben Abdesselam, the last man with him. He won by 25 seconds and told reporters afterward he felt he could have run another 10 or 15 kilometers.

An Ethiopian soldier of the Imperial Guard, running barefoot through Rome, made his decisive move at the monument Rome had stolen from Ethiopia. Sport does not often write things that neatly.

Tokyo, and the Appendix

Four years later he made the legend permanent. In Tokyo, Bikila ran in shoes — Puma, for the record — and won again in a world best of 2:12:11.2, beating the field by more than four minutes, the largest Olympic marathon margin in forty years. He had undergone an appendectomy roughly five weeks earlier. He finished, then performed stretches and calisthenics on the infield while the rest of the world's best marathoners were still on the course.

He became the first man to win back-to-back Olympic marathons. Only two others have ever done it: Waldemar Cierpinski and Eliud Kipchoge.

After

On March 22, 1969, Bikila's Volkswagen overturned near Addis Ababa. The crash left him paralyzed from the neck down; he eventually regained the use of his arms and upper body but never walked again. Haile Selassie sent him to England for treatment, and in 1970 he competed at the Stoke Mandeville Games — the forerunner of the Paralympics — in archery and table tennis.

He died on Oct. 25, 1973, at 41, of a cerebral hemorrhage traced to the accident. Ethiopia held a state funeral attended by some 65,000 people, and the Emperor declared a national day of mourning. The national stadium in Addis Ababa carries his name.

Every Ethiopian and Kenyan runner who has dominated distance running since traces back to the evening of this date in 1960 — to a man who wasn't even supposed to make the team, running through torchlight without shoes, past a stolen obelisk, into history.

What's the most meaningful victory in Olympic history? Comments below.