Abebe Bikila

Shambel Abebe Bikila, born on 7 August 1932 and died on 25 October 1973, was an Ethiopian marathon runner and a back-to-back Olympic marathon champion. He was the first Ethiopian Olympic gold medalist, winning at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome while running barefoot, and he won again at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, becoming the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic marathon title. Both victories came in world record time. A soldier in the Ethiopian Imperial Guard who rose to the rank of shambel, or captain, he ran sixteen marathons in total, winning twelve and finishing second in the first. A car accident in 1969 left him paralysed, and he later competed in archery and table tennis at the 1970 Stoke Mandeville Games. He died in 1973 of a cerebral haemorrhage related to the accident and received a state funeral, and Abebe Bikila Stadium in Addis Ababa is named for him.