Growing up in the segregated town of Clarksville, Tennessee, in the 1960s, Alta's family cannot afford to buy her new sneakers--but she still plans to attend the parade celebrating her hero Wilma Rudolph's three Olympic gold medals.

A biography of the African-American woman who overcame crippling polio as a child to become the first woman to win three gold medals in track in a single Olympics.

Before Wilma was five years old, polio had paralyzed her left leg. Everyone said she would never walk again. But Wilma refused to believe it. Not only would she walk again, she vowed, she'd run. And she did run -- all the way to the Olympics, where she became the first American woman to earn three gold medals in a single olympiad.

"Wilma was born into a family with 22 brothers and sisters, in the segregated South. She contracted polio in her early years and her doctors said she would never walk again. But Wilma persisted with treatment, and she recovered her strength by the age of 12. At school, Wilma showed a talent for basketball and sprinting, earning the nickname "Skeeter" (mosquito) as she ran so fast. Wilma was in college when she went to the 1960 Olympics. She not only...

Profiles Wilma Rudolph, who overcame childhood polio to become an Olympic medal-winning runner.

A biography of the woman who overcame crippling polio as a child to become the first woman to win three gold medals in track in a single Olympics.

Autobiography of the woman who overcame crippling polio as a child to become the first woman to win three gold medals in track in a single Olympics.