Wilma Rudolph grimaces. A late-morning breakfast tray of tea, toast and jam has just been delivered to her Miami hotel suite.
“I tell you, if I wasn’t jet-lagged, I’d be eating one of those great big Polish sausages with everything — you know, sauerkraut, mustard, pickle relish — heaped on.”
Rudolph laughs, a deep, husky laugh.
“Oh, I know, I know. Not the Breakfast of Champions.”
Not as a rule. But then, Wilma Rudolph does not pay much mind to rules. In fact, she breaks them. She always has.
Tearing across the finish line at the 1960 Olympic Games, Rudolph broke the rule that said polio victims grow up to be invalids, not sprinters, and young black girls grow up to be maids, not athletes.
She also shattered a world record.
In 11.3 seconds, Rudolph had become the world’s fastest woman sprinter and the world’s sweetheart.
In Paris, crowds in love with La Gazelle Noir screamed marriage proposals. In Cologne, West Germany, mounted police held back adoring fans, barely able to control the rapturous rioting. In Berlin, her public surrounded her bus and beat on it until she got off. Then they stole her shoes. They could not get enough of this young woman who had sprinted straight from a dirt track in Tennessee to fame.
Returning home to the United States, the first black woman to win three gold medals at a single Olympiad, Rudolph was praised but pushed, ever so slightly, aside.
“I didn’t expect to be a hero — as soon as I got home I packed up my gold medals and prepared to get on with the rest of my life — but I did hope I would be given an equal chance. But it was 1960 and society had rules against that,” Rudolph says. “It was a shock but I got over the hurt and decided to go on like those rules didn’t exist.
“I was running out front and I intended to hang on to my lead.”
Twenty-eight years later, Rudolph still is making fast tracks.
At 47, she is president of the non-profit Wilma Rudolph Foundation, which provides educational and athletic training to disadvantaged children, track director at DePauw University near Indianapolis and a paid spokeswoman for Seagram’s Coolers American Team Family Fund — a corporate program providing financial support to the 1988 Summer Olympic athletes and their families. She was in Miami last week to publicize the Family Fund.
Her personal life moves only slightly slower. Divorced, Rudolph spends most of her free time trying to keep up with her four teen-agers.
“I wouldn’t mind having a man in my life but, to be honest with you, I’m not sure if I have time for that kind of running around,” she says, laughing. “Besides, I’m looking for somebody special, somebody who won’t insist I change my last name.”
Born Wilma Glodean Rudolph on June 23, 1940, in Clarksville, Tenn., she remained a Rudolph after she married her high school sweetheart in 1961. “The rule then was you changed your last name but I wanted to stand out as my own person. And believe me, when I didn’t change my name, I did.”
Today, Rudolph still stands out. Impeccably dressed in a fuchsia silk blouse and black slim skirt, her coppery red hair cropped close, her hands carefully manicured, she is stunning — all 6-foot-3-inches of her. It’s no wonder the French called her The Black Gazelle.
Her elegance is matched only by her confidence.
“I like who I am and I like what I’m doing,” she says. “I don’t even mind getting up early to interview with the press.”
During the past week, Rudolph has talked to dozens of reporters — in Indianapolis, New York City, Boston and Miami — about the Seagram’s Family Fund. Her endorsement is enthusiastic, and she says, sincere.
“The worst and saddest moment for an Olympic contender is leaving for the Games without family, but travel costs are so high that most families don’t have any choice but to stay at home,” Rudolph says.
Promoting itself and the Olympics, Seagram’s will pay the $7 million needed to send about 550 family members — one for each athlete competing in 23 sporting events — to Seoul, Korea, where the ’88 Summer Games will be held in September. In addition to a round-trip airline ticket, Seagram’s says it also will provide accomodations and $1,000 in expense money.
“This is a wonderful program,” Rudolph says. “Without family support, most young people wouldn’t make it to the Olympics. Families deserve to go. I know mine did.”
But Rudolph’s family didn’t go.
They didn’t have the money. So, her parents and her 21 brothers and sisters gathered around a TV set to watch her run.
“You know, there was just one thought going through my head as I hit that finish line in Rome. I was wondering if the race was being broadcast back home, if my family could see me,” she says. “Because it was as much their victory as mine.”
“It sure was,” interrupts 43-year-old “baby” sister Charlene Rudolph. Charlene has entered her sister’s suite just in time to catch Wilma’s tribute to her family and can’t resist some good-natured teasing.
“All of us — mother and father, sisters and brothers — we spent hundreds of hours massaging her legs when they were paralyzed by the polio. And now look at them …”
Wilma crosses her long, strong, lovely legs, grinning at Charlene.
“Her legs are gorgeous! I could hate her for those legs if I hadn’t gone to so much work to make them that way.”
The two women break into laughter, clearly best friends.
“Through the years, when it seemed like I’d never finish college or get my foundation built and I’d stop believing in myself, I would turn to Charlene and she’d believe in me,” Wilma says.
“Now that I’m divorced and she’s widowed, we’re practically inseparable. I rarely travel without her. And when I do, I’m on the phone 10 minutes after checking into the hotel, asking her how things are at home.”
The sisters share a large, noisy home in Indianapolis. “With her four children and my two, I tell you it’s like The Cosby Show seven nights a week,” Charlene says.
“But it’s a good arrangement — a little chaotic but comfortable — the way a family is,” Wilma says.
And there is nothing as important as family, she adds. It’s for the sake of families, Rudolph explains, that she’s going public for Seagram’s, that she’s spending her every spare nickel promoting education and amateur athletics, that she’s serving as track director for an obscure college in Indiana.
“All my efforts go to promoting the family, to creating opportunities for families because I would not be as successful and happy as I am today if my family hadn’t created opportunities for me,” she says. “I’m also trying to provide support for families because it’s not enough to help families win.”
Because even winning can be a struggle, it doesn’t necessarily pay big money or open doors.
“After the 1960 games, when I tried to get contracts endorsing products, I was told that — as a rule — black women were not marketable,” Rudolph says. “I was shocked but not stopped. Once I recovered my senses, I set out to change the rule.”
But not by marching. Or taking a seat at a segregated lunch counter. “To be honest with you, I didn’t think I could have helped the cause that way; I didn’t think I could be slapped and not strike back,” Rudolph says. “I had to do something, but do it different, so I set up my foundation.”
Just like Wilma Rudolph, changing the rules.
“But there is one rule I hold sacred,” Rudolph says. “Never look back. There’s too much to do in life to waste time wishing things were the way they used to be.”
Believe her. This is a woman who packed up three Olympic golds in 1960 and hasn’t opened the box since.
