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Barefoot Runner
The Life of Marathon Champion Abebe Bikila
- Author:
- By Paul Rambali
- Awards:
- William Hill Sports Book Of The Year Award Short Listed 2006
- Format:
- Paperback (Paperback)
- Availability:
- Out of print. Try our second hand search facility.
- Price:
- £11.99
- Tagged with:
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Further Details
- Published: 15th Sep 2006
- ISBN: 1852429046
- Pages: 320
From Word of Sport:
We got a proof copy of this and it was absorbing. OK, the subject matter on surface seems worthy but a bit dull, the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal, but Bikila's incredible life cannot be defined by his triumph in 1960 or, indeed, by repeating the feat in 1964. It encompasses the poverty of rural Ethiopia in the early 1930s, the Italian invasion, Bikila's recruitment into Haile Sealssie's imperial guard, his discovery by a Swedish coach, implication in a coup d'etat against the emperor/god and an overturned death sentence. His Olympic golds were a great achievement but it is his life that is fascinating and Rambali pitches his story perfectly.
From the Publisher:
Abebe Bikila was the first African to win an Olympic gold medal. He won the marathon running barefoot in Rome in 1960 and won again - wearing shoes this time - in Tokyo four years later, becoming the first person to win the most gruelling of all human contests twice. His story has never before been told.
Born in a village on Ethiopia's high plateau, Bikila joined the Imperial Guard of Emperor Haile Selassie, where he came to the notice of Swedish athletics coach, Onni Niskanen. Selassie believed that through sports his nation - and the African continent - could earn the world's respect, and the humble Guardsman became the focus of these ambitions. Following his spectacular victory at the 1960 Olympics, however, Bikila's life took a dramatic turn when he was implicated in a coup against the emperor and sentenced to hang.
Barefoot Runner relates his marathon battles and recounts a personal marathon - from shepherd boy to Olympic legend - telling how Bikila's final destiny became fatally entwined with the decline and fall of Ethiopia's last emperor.
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