Wilma Rudolph Was Told She'd NEVER Walk Again, Then Won 3 Olympic Golds

Doctors told a little girl in Tennessee she would never walk again. She won three Olympic golds.

Wilma Rudolph was born premature, the twentieth of twenty-two children, into a poor segregated town.

Polio twisted her left leg. For years she wore a heavy brace and a special shoe.

Every week her mother took her for hours to a clinic, then they massaged her leg by hand.

Around nine, she stunned her doctors by taking off the brace and walking on her own.

By twelve she ran. By sixteen she was at the Olympics, winning bronze in Melbourne.

Four years later in Rome, the world finally saw what that braced little girl had become.

She won the 100, the 200, and anchored the relay: three golds in a single Games.

They called her the fastest woman on Earth, the first American to win three track golds.

The girl who couldn't walk had outrun everyone, then came home and marched against segregation.

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