What is Abebe Bikila?
[[File:Abebe Bikila 1968c.jpg|200px|thumbnail|{{center|Abebe Bikila}}]] '''Abebe Bikila''' (7 August 1932 - 25 October 1973) was a double [[Olympic Games|Olympic]] [[marathon]] champion from [[Ethiopia]]. He was the first black [[African]] Olympian to win a gold medal representing his own country.<ref>Edward Seldon Sears, ''Running Through the Ages'' (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), p. 296</ref> He is most famous for the gold medal he won in the [[1960 Summer Olympics]] at [[Rome]]. He won the marathon while running barefoot.<ref>Michael Hurley, ''World's Greatest Olympians'' (Chicago, Il: Heinemann Library, 2012), p. 10</ref> He won his second Gold medal in the 1964 Olympics in [[Tokyo]].<ref name=Sears297>Edward Seldon Sears, ''Running Through the Ages'' (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), p. 297</ref> This made him the first man ever to win two Olympic marathons.<ref name=Sears297/> He competed in the [[1968 Summer Olympics]]. Bikila was injured in an [[automobile accident]] in 1970.<ref name=DAB42>''Dictionary of African Biography'', eds. Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Vol I (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 42</ref> It left him a [[paraplegic]]. He died at the age of forty-one on 23 October 1973. This was due to complications from his earlier accident.<ref name=DAB42/> A [[stadium]] in [[Addis Ababa]] is named after him. == References == {{reflist}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Bikila, Abebe}} [[Category:1973 deaths]] [[Category:1932 births]] [[Category:1968 Summer Olympics]] [[Category:Ethiopian athletes]] [[Category:Olympians for Ethiopia]] [[Category:Medalists at the 1960 Summer Olympics]] [[Category:Medalists at the 1964 Summer Olympics]] [[Category:Olympic gold medalists]] {{sports-bio-stub}}