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Sarah Chen's Achilles tendon rupture should have ended her Olympic dreams. With no insurance and no surgery, she cobbled together her own recovery plan using library books and folk remedies. What she discovered accidentally revolutionized how athletes heal.
Doctors told her family she would never walk normally. Rural Tennessee in the 1940s offered little reason to argue with that verdict. But Wilma Rudolph — the twentieth of twenty-two children, born premature and fighting from her very first breath — had a different idea about what her body could do. By 1960, she was the fastest woman alive.
Alice Coachman grew up in rural Georgia with no shoes, no coaching, and no permission to dream as big as she did. In 1948, she leapt higher than any woman on earth and made history. So why does almost nobody know her name?
Wilma Rudolph was the twentieth of twenty-two children, born premature in rural Tennessee, and told by doctors that she would never walk normally. Twelve years later, she was the fastest woman on Earth. This is the story of what happened in between.