 Dr. Charles Robbins who won 11 U.S. national championships including the Yonkers Marathon in 1944, finished the Boston Marathon 20 times, with a third place in 1944, and was an alternate to the marathon team at the 1948 London Olympics often ran races barefoot.In 1960, Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia won the Olympic marathon in Rome barefoot setting a new world record after discovering that Adidas, the Olympic shoe supplier, had run out of shoes in his size.He was in pain because he had received shoes that were too small, so he decided to simply run barefoot; Bikila had trained running barefoot prior to the Olympics.