As a child she suffered polio, double pneumonia and scarlet fever, the latter two visiting her at the same time and leaving her with a crippled leg. Steel braces and orthopedic shoes were part of her daily life, while hot-water treatment and massages delivered by her family were to Rudolph what playtime was for her peers.

Miracles happen. At 11, she threw off her corrective shoe and started to play basketball with her brothers.

By 12, the shoe was discarded for good and Rudolph would later recall the feeling thus: "I was healthy all over my body for the first time. I felt at that point that my life was beginning at last. That summer I went over to a playground in twon and all the kids were around playing a game called basketball." She took the game up with a vengeance and made school and college teams, her new athletic interest leading her to the man she would later marry, fellow athlete Robert Eldridge.

Amazingly, just four years later she made the US Olympic team for the 1956 Games at 16 years of age. She did not make the final of the 200m but won a bronze medal as a member of the 4x100m relay. On the day she returned from Melbourne, she played basketball for her school team.

In the winter of 1958, she became pregnant and had to stop playing basketball. She did, however, continue her schooling and graduated from high school just two months before Yolanda was born.

From six weeks old, Yolanda grew up in the family of one of Wilma's sisters, while Wilma went to Tennessee State University on an athletics scholarship. By late 1959, she had developed into a medal contender.

The day before her first race in Rome, she sprained her ankle but doctors packed it with ice and the injury proved negligable for one who had suffered so much as a child.

Rudolph won three gold medals in Rome and remains one of only three women to win all three Olympic sprint events on the track, over 100m, in a world record, 200m and in the 4x100m relay.

The Romans dubbed her La Gazella Nera, The Black Gazelle, so graceful was her flowing style, so easy did she make her victories appear. Her world records over 100 and 200m, 11.0sec and 22.9sec, survived the 1964 Olympic Games.

Rudolph retired a year after the Games, married Eldridge and campaigned for civil rights. She later operated a company called Wilma Unlimited and the couple had three more children.

Her life ended as it had begun - in a struggle to survive the ravishes of illness. On November 12, 1994, at the age of 54, Rudolph died from cancer of the brain.

CRAIG LORD
The Times