page_title: Abebe Bikila
section_title: Accident and death
hierarchical_section_title: Abebe Bikila / Biography / Accident and death
caption_attribution_description: English: Rome, Via di San Gregorio, plaque in memory of the 50th anniversary of Abebe Bikila's win in the 1960 Summer Olympics marathon. The Plaque reads: To ABEBE BIKILA (1932-1973) Ethiopian marathon runner Winner of the marathon at the XVII Olympiad On the olympic streets of Rome he showed to the world the heart and pride of his land 10 September 1960 - 10 September 2010
context_page_description: Shambel Abebe Bikila was an Ethiopian marathon runner who was a back-to-back Olympic marathon champion. He is the first African Olympic gold medalist, winning his first gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome while running barefoot. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he won his second gold medal. In turn, he became the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic marathon title. In both victories, he ran in world record time.
  Born in Shewa, Abebe moved to Addis Ababa around 1952 and joined the 5th Infantry Regiment of the Ethiopian Imperial Guard, an elite infantry division that safeguarded the Emperor of Ethiopia. Enlisting as a soldier before his athletic career, he rose to the rank of shambel. Abebe participated in a total of sixteen marathons. He placed second on his first marathon in Addis Ababa, won twelve other races, and finished fifth in the 1963 Boston Marathon. In July 1967, he sustained the first of several sports-related leg injuries that prevented him from finishing his last two marathons. Abebe was a pioneer in long-distance running.
context_section_description: On the night of March 22, 1969, Abebe lost control of his Volkswagen Beetle and it overturned, trapping him inside. According to biographer Tim Judah, he may have been drinking. Judah quotes Abebe's account of the accident from the biography by his daughter, Tsige Abebe, that he tried "to avoid a fast, oncoming car". Judah wrote that it was difficult to know for certain what happened. Abebe was freed from his car the following morning and brought to the Imperial Guard hospital. The accident left him a quadriplegic, paralysed from the neck down; he never walked again. On March 29 Abebe was transferred to Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England, where he spent eight months receiving treatment. He was visited by Queen Elizabeth II and received get-well cards from all over the world. Although Abebe could not move his head at first, his condition eventually improved to paraplegia, regaining the use of his arms.
  In 1970, Abebe began training for wheelchair-athlete archery competitions. In July, he competed in archery and table tennis at the Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Games in London. The following April, Abebe participated in games for the disabled in Norway. Although he had been invited as a guest, he competed in archery and table tennis and defeated a field of sixteen in cross-country sled dog racing with a time of 1:16:17.
  Abebe was invited to the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich as a special guest, and received a standing ovation during the opening ceremony. His countryman Mamo Wolde did not match his back-to-back Olympic marathon victories, finishing third behind Frank Shorter of the United States and Karel Lismont of Belgium. After Shorter received his gold medal, he shook Abebe's hand.
  On October 25, 1973, Abebe died in Addis Ababa at age 41 of a cerebral hemorrhage, a complication related to his accident four years earlier. He was buried with full military honours; his state funeral was attended by an estimated 65,000 people including Haile Selassie, who proclaimed a day of mourning for the country's national hero. Abebe is interred in a tomb with a bronze statue at Saint Joseph Church in Addis Ababa.
caption: Plaque commemorating Abebe on the Via di San Gregorio in Rome
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