Few athletes have triumphed over personal adversity to the extent of Wilma Rudolph who died on 12 November, 1994, aged 54.

Born prematurely into a poor black family in segregated Tennessee, Mrs Rudolph was diagnosed with the crippling disease of polio at the age of four.

But she learned to walk with braces, her family helped with the exercises needed to strengthen her muscles and by the age of 12 she could walk unaided.

Eight years later Ms Rudolph won three gold medals at the Rome Olympics and was one of the world’s most celebrated athletes.

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born on 23 June, 1940, the 20th of 22 children, in Clarksville, Tennessee. Her father worked as a railroad porter and his mother as a servant in wealthy households. Somehow they made ends meet.

Born prematurely she weighed only 4.5lbs at birth and survived measles, mumps, chicken pox and double pneumonia before a doctor diagnosed the wasting in her left leg as polio, a crippling and incurable disease.

The doctor told her mother that she would never walk but Mrs Rudolph did not give up. She could not be treated at the local whites-only hospital so her mother made the 50-mile trip to a hospital for black people twice a week so that Mrs Rudolph could get the treatment she needed.

The hospital visits continued for two years until she learned to walk with a metal brace on her leg. The doctors told her how to do her exercises at home and with the help of her brothers and sisters Mrs Rudolph worked hard at becoming strong and getting better.

Finally at the age of 12 she was able to walk without brace, crutch or corrective shoes. She decided to become an athlete and joined the girls’ basketball team at the all African-American Burt High School.

Playing basketball she came to the attention of Tennessee State track coach, Ed Temple. Mr Temple was an inspirational coach and at the age of 16 Mrs Rudolph made the USA squad for the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 where she won a bronze medal in the 4x100m relay.

At the 1960 Rome Olympics she won a hat-trick of gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m events, breaking various records along the way. Gracious, softly spoken and beautiful, she became an international sensation overnight.

At her homecoming Ms Rudolph refused to take part in the blacks-only celebration that had been planned and the subsequent parade and banquet was one of the first integrated events that Clarksville had ever seen.

When she retired from athletics Mrs Rudolph became a teacher, track coach and worked occasionally as a sports commentator. She married her childhood sweetheart Robert Eldridge in 1963 and together they had four children.

Mrs Rudolph was voted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in 1973 and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974. One of her own proudest achievements was the founding of the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, a community-based athletics programme.Her athletic achievements in themselves are quite brilliant. That her successes were achieved after overcoming such seemingly overwhelming adversity is the stuff of legend.

She was the role model to a generation of female athletes, black and white. As an athletics coach, Mrs Rudolph outlined her teaching philosophy: “I remind them that triumph can’t be had without the struggle.”