13-威尔玛-鲁道夫.docVIP

13-威尔玛-鲁道夫 13-威尔玛-鲁道夫 PAGE 13-威尔玛-鲁道夫 13 Wilma Rudolph People called Wilma Rudolph “the Black Pearl”, “the Black Gazelle” and “the fastest woman in the world”. In nineteen sixty, she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in one Olympics. 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. Every week, Wilma’s mother drove her to a special doctor eighty kilometers away. Here, she got physical treatments to help heal her leg. She later said: “My doctors told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.” Soon, her family’s attention and care showed results. By the time she was nine years old, she no longer needed her leg braces. When she was eleven years old, her brothers set up a basketball hoop in the backyard. After that, she played basketball every day. As a teenager, Wilma joined the girl’s basketball team at Burt High School. She did very well in high school basketball. She once scored forty-nine points in one game, which broke the Tennessee state record. Wilma Rudolph went to her first Olympic Games when she was sixteen years old and still in high school. She competed in the nineteen fifty-six games in Melbourne, Australia. She won a bronze medal, or third place, in the sprint relay event. In nineteen sixty, Wilma Rudolph went to the Olympics again, this time in Rome, Italy. She won two gold medals in the one hundred meter and the two hundred meter races. She set a new Olympic record of twenty-three point two seconds for the two hundred meter sprint relay event, setting a world record of forty-four point five seconds. After she retired from sports, Wilma Rudolph completed her edu