Barefoot on the Stones of Rome

On the evening of September 10, 1960, sixty-nine runners lined up for the Olympic marathon in Rome. Among them stood Abebe Bikila, a twenty-eight-year-old member of the Ethiopian Imperial Guard, virtually unknown to the sporting world. What the other competitors noticed immediately were his feet — bare against the cobblestones. His issued shoes had given him blisters, so he simply removed them and ran the way he had trained in the highlands of Ethiopia.…