True story · No. 17

Abebe Bikila, Rome 1960: The Barefoot Marathon by Torchlight

Why did Abebe Bikila run barefoot? On September 10, 1960, a near-unknown Ethiopian sets off from Rome’s Capitoline Hill without shoes, and sources disagree on exactly why. Two hours later, Italian soldiers light with torches the road he is climbing back up in the lead, toward the Arch of Constantine. He has just broken the world record.

By the PacePoster desk · October 16, 2026 · 3 min · 15 sources

Abebe Bikila, barefoot, in the Olympic marathon in Rome, September 10, 1960 Unknown author, 1960 (Comitato organizzatore dei Giochi della XVII Olimpiade), public domain in Italy (PD-Italia) and in the US (PD-1996), via Wikimedia Commons — PacePoster duotone

01An unknown arrives in Rome

Abebe Bikila is no star when he lands in Rome. A soldier in the Ethiopian Imperial Guard, he has only recently started running marathons. In the athletics world, almost nobody has heard of him.

2:15:16world record

25 secwinning margin

5:30 p.m.the start

02Why did Abebe Bikila run barefoot?

This is where the accounts diverge. According to World Athletics, his shoes fall apart in the last days before the Games, and the pair bought to replace them gives him blisters. According to AIMS, the shoes bought in Rome are simply uncomfortable; according to the Olympic Museum, he cannot find any in his size. Every version leads to the same result: he runs barefoot, as he often does in training, the Olympic Museum notes. None describes a gesture of defiance: it is a story about shoes, not a manifesto.

He has just broken the world record.

03A race run by torchlight

The start is at 5:30 p.m. on the Campidoglio square, to avoid the heat. The finish is judged under the Arch of Constantine, a stone’s throw from the Colosseum. In between, night falls: Italian soldiers light the road with torches, all the way along the Appian Way. Hundreds of them, according to World Athletics. From the 20th kilometer on, Bikila and Morocco’s Rhadi Ben Abdesselam lead the race side by side.

The Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum in Rome: the 1960 Olympic marathon finish was judged under the arch Jean-Pol Grandmont, 2011, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — PacePoster duotone

04The Axum obelisk

In the finale, the race passes the Axum obelisk, an Ethiopian stele carried off to Rome by Mussolini’s troops in 1937, which would not go back to Axum until 2005. It is there, about 500 meters from the finish, that Bikila drops Rhadi. The sources describe the place, not an intention: the coincidence is too good to ignore, too fragile to tell as a plan.

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052:15:16

He crosses the line in 2:15:16.2, a world record and Olympic record, with a margin of 25 sec over Rhadi. The bronze medal goes to New Zealand’s Barry Magee. It is the first time a Black African wins the Olympic marathon.

06Tokyo, then the road

Four years later, in Tokyo, he wins again, wearing shoes this time, a little over a month after an appendicitis operation: 2:12:11.2, a new world record, with a lead of more than four minutes. Nobody had yet won two Olympic marathons. In 1969, a car accident leaves him paralyzed. He dies on October 25, 1973, aged 41, of a cerebral hemorrhage linked to that accident. The Olympic Museum salutes him as a pioneer who opened the way for African distance runners.

Sources for this story (15)

Every fact was cross-checked in at least two independent sources. Where they disagree, the story says so.