Wilma Rudolph, born June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, Tenn., was the 20th of 22 children. As a young child, Rudolph was frequently ill, suffering through pneumonia, scarlet fever and polio, among other ailments. Rudolph was tutored at home until she was 7 years old, when she was enrolled in school. It wasn’t until she was 11, after years of exercise, that she was able to walk without the aid of a metal leg brace.
In high school, after joining the basketball team, Rudolph was recruited by the track coach at Tennessee State University to join a summer sports camp. When she graduated from high school, Rudolph received a full scholarship to Tennessee State and began to set her sights on the Olympics.
She participated in her first Olympic competition in 1956 and won the bronze in the 4×4 relay. In Rome in 1960, she became the first American woman to win three Olympic gold medals — in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and as the anchor on the 400-meter relay team — after breaking world records in all of them, which won her notoriety as the “World’s Fastest Woman.”
Ruldolph died at her home in Nashville, Tenn., in 1994 after a battle with brain cancer. She was 54.

— Jessica Richelderfer