On a scale of one to 10, in terms of weird coincidences, it was maybe a 4.
On Black Friday, I had taken advantage of an online sale to acquire a new pair of Vibram Five Fingers, the Bikila model. I had been lusting after these for a long time, hoping that, with their full coverage of the foot and their treaded soles, they would be better for running in the winter.
So, anyway, the very next day we were killing some time in a local used bookstore and I stumbled across a copy of Rome 1960, The Olympics That Changed the World, by David Maraniss. I was intrigued, because I am of the opinion that it was the 1956 Olympics (Helsinki) that changed the world – the running world, at least. So I started browsing the book, by which I mean I went to the index to find out what chapter covered the marathon. Near the end, 19. Makes sense.
I start reading. Maraniss takes us to the starting line near the Campigdoglio steps. There are just 69 runners milling about, one of which is Gordon McKenzie, the American hope to win the race.
As he waited for the gun that would send the international horde off and running, McKenzie stood next to his teammate, Allen Kelley, and not far from “a skinny little African guy in bare feet.” How could someone think of running in bare feet? McKenzie wondered.
“Well,” he said to Kelley, nodding in the direction of the bare-footed stranger. “There’s one guy we don’t have to worry about.”
Ok, so we can sort of guess how this is going to come out…
In bare feet, dark red trunks, bright green shirt, the two vertical lines of No. 11 defining his narrow, bony back – that was Adobe Bikila. He had running shoes with him when the Ethiopian team arrived in Addis Ababa nearly a month earlier, but the shoes were frayed and had to be replaced. In Rome he bought new ones, and wore them on several practice runs, but they did not fit the contours of his thin feet and caused blisters. On the day of the race, he decided it would be less painful to run with no shoes than with the ill-fitting shoes, so there he was in his bare feet.
So that’s the coincidence part. I had had no idea where the name Bikila came from when I bought my new VFFs. But, as is usually the case, the coincidence part of things is not the interesting bit. What is interesting is where it led…
Abebe Bikila, Rome 1960
Maraniss goes on to explain that part of what made the Rome games the ones that Changed Everything is that it was the first games in which a vast number of new African states were represented for the first time, these newly-formed states having only recently thrown off the husks of oppressive colonialism. Prior to this point, only two sub-Saharan Africans had medaled in the Rome Olympics: Clement Quartey (Ghana) won a silver in light welterweight boxing, and Abdoulaye Seye (Senegal) had won bronze in the 200m.
Adebe Bikila had been a member of Ethiopian strongman Haile Selassie’s Imperial Army, competing in 5k and 10k races, when he was discovered by Onni Niskanen, the country’s athletic director of sorts, a Swede born in Finland and hired by the government to train an Olympic squad. And it turns out Bikila was only a last-minute addition to the Ethiopian team, as another runner, Wami Barutu, had broken his ankle playing soccer just a few days before the team’s departure.
The team arrived in Rome about a month early to train and they ran various parts of the route, according to Niskanen:
I let them run alternately with or without shoes. I myself followed behind Abebe Bikila by car and studied style, foot stance and counted step speed. My brother Arne was in another car and studied Abebe Wakjira, who was always behind from the beginning. It appeared that Abebe Bikila was 5 – 6 steps slower per minute with shoes and his running style was not as perfect as when he ran barefoot.
After a few similar trials, we decided to let both of them run barefoot in the marathon race. The race took place in the evening, so the risk of hot tarmac was completely gone. After the decision, the runners ran barefoot all the time to harden the soles of their feet. Even in the Olympic Village, they had to walk around without shoes. [Onni Niskanen site]
Niskanen had his two marathoners (Abebe Wakgira was also entered in the marathon for Ethiopia; he finished 7th) memorize the number of all the top runners – whom to look out for. But the other leading African contender, Rhadi Ben Abdesselam, from Morocco, had changed his number just prior to the race, and little did Bikila know that he had run alongside him of much of the race, pushing the pace, hoping at some point to catch up with the elusive Rhadi. Bikila sprinted the last 500 meters and won the marathon with a record time of 2:15:16.2, becoming the first Sub-Saharan African ever to win an Olympic gold medal.
The Italian doctor, who examined Abebe after the race, had only one word to say: “Fantastico!” His pulse was 88, his eyes bright, no signs of tiredness and not one blister on his bare feet. On my question, how far he could have continued at the same pace, Abebe answered: 10 – 15 km “ganano” (longer). [Onni Niskanen site]
Having recently run the cobblestoned streets of Rome in Nike Frees, and been rewarded with a decent amount of foot pain, I was extremely impressed to read about Bikila’s feat (and feet, too). But of course the story does not end there. Bikila went on to win the 1964 Olympic marathon (Tokyo), becoming the first person ever to win it in two successive Olympics (he ran Tokyo in shoes), with a new record time of 2:12:11.2, just 40 days after being operated on for acute appendicitis. The silver medalist trailed him by over four minutes.
Bikila competed in the 1968 Olympic race, but had to drop out due to injury. Then, in 1969, back in Ethiopia, he was in a tragic automobile accident (swerving to avoid some demonstrators) and ended up a quadriplegic, improved through an operation in England to paraplegic. Over the next few years, he rallied and, at Niskanen’s urging, went on to compete in archery competitions for athletes in wheelchairs.
Such an amazing story, it sounds like a movie, right? Funny you should say that, because in 2009 a movie was released based on Bikila’s life story, The Athlete (Atletu). It has gotten great reviews and several awards (it seems to be playing at film festivals around the country right now and is not yet out on DVD). Here’s the trailer:
The quote, spoken by the Niskanen character, at the end of the trailer is great (hope I transcribed it correctly): “Running and winning are two different things. You can have a great runner, but without the man inside, you can’t have a great winner.”
So I began all this not even knowing who Bikila was, and now come away convinced his name should be used as a verb: “to gutsily strive for something that everyone around you considers to be unattainable.” As in, get up of your butt, go out there and bikila something!
