200m event winner Wilma Rudolph (centre) with Jutta Heine (right) and Dorothy Hyman during the 1960 Olympic Games

KEY FACTS

Dates: August 25 - September 11

Other candidate cities: Lausanne, Detroit, Budapest, Brussels, Mexico, Tokyo

Participants: 5,338 (611 women)

Participating nations: 83

Disciplines: 17

Events: 150

Medals given out: 461

IOC president: Avery Brundage (USA)

Games declared open by: Italian President Gronchi

Last relay bearer of the Olympic flame: Giancarlo Peris (Italy, athletics)

Olympic flame lit by: Giancarlo Peris (Italy, athletics)

Olympic oath read by: Adolfo Consolini (Italy, athletics)

Television rights: $1.178m

Accredited journalists: 2194

ANECDOTES

Drama

The Rome Games witnessed many dramas: a Danish cyclist, Knud Eneberg-Jensen, died following a 100km team time trial due to a combination of doping and exposure. He became only the second person to die during the Olympic Games, after the death of the Portugese marathon runner Francisco Lazaro in 1912.

Mistake

American swimmer Lance Larson was robbed of the 100m freestyle title after a controversial race in Rome. Although two electronic devices recorded that Larson touched home ahead of John Devitt, judges awarded the gold medal to the Australian. The American’s disputed the decison for four years but the ruling was never overturned.

Africa

The Rome marathon was run at night. The Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, a soldier at the Imperial palace of Haile Selassie, won gold after covering the 26 miles running barefoot. He crossed the line at exactly the same spot where, 25-years earlier, Mussolini had deployed his troops for their colonialist campaign in Ethiopia.

Longevity

The sabre-fencing competitor, Hungarian Aladar Gerevich, celebrated his 50th birthday on the day he won gold in the team event. This was his tenth Olympic medal, his seventh gold. Twenty-four years separated his first medal, won in 1936 in Berlin, from his last. His father-in-law, Albert Bogen, had previously won the silver medal in the sabre team event for Austria in 1912. His wife, Eva Bogathy, won the bronze in the individual foil fencing event in 1932 and his son won the bronze in 1972 and 1980 in the individual sabre event.

Blessing

Pope Jean XXIII was present to give his papal blessing to a thousand athletes in Saint Paul’s square before the beginning of the competitions. He watched the semi-finals of the canoe-kayak event from the windows of his home in Verano.

Versatility

The American weightlifter of Japanese origin, Tommy Kono, won the silver medal in the middleweight division. He took his third consecutive Olympic medal but, uniquely, all three were in different weight categories: (1952 lightweight, 1956 light-heavyweight). Outside the Olympic arena Kono was twice voted Mr Universe.

EXPLOIT

The image of Abebe Bikila’s arrival, winner of the 1960 Olympic marathon in Rome running barefoot, will always remain engraved in golden letters in the history of the Games. The 28-year-old Ethiopian, an Imperial guardsman to Emperor Haile Selassie, became the first black African to reach the highest point on the Olympic winners’ podium.

SUMMARY

The image of barefoot Ethiopian Abebe Bikila running to victory in the marathon, passing the vestiges of Rome’s once truly glorious splendour, lent the 1960 Olympics a nostalgic link between history and modernity as the first Games to be exposed to mass market TV.

Rome is widely held to be one of Europe’s most beautiful cities and organisers made spectacular use of this quality when choosing where to locate events.

Turkish wrestlers took seven golds in the sumptuous surroundings of the Maxence Basilica while the Soviets took 15 of a possible 16 medals in gymnastics at a site by the Caracalla Thermal baths.

The Eternal City can boast to have staged one of the greatest ever Games. The hosts came third in the medals table and the Olympic movement later declared deep satisfaction with how things had gone.

One of the Games’ heroes came in the form of African-American Wilma Rudolph, the 21st of a 22 child family who overcame polio at the age of nine to go on and win the 100m, 200m and 4x100m golds in Rome, where local papers nicknamed her ‘the Black Gazelle’.

The men’s sprint titles traditionally went to Americans but in Rome, Germany’s Armin Hary won the 100m dash and to the ecstatic cheers of the delirious home crowds Livio Berrutti, an Italian, won the 200m gold.

Other memorable feats included the beating of Jesse Owens’ long-jump record after it had stood some 25 years. America’s Ralph Boston finally breaking the spell with a jump of 8.21m.

Two antipodean middle distance runners also broke onto the scene. Peter Snell from New Zealand bagged the 800m gold and Australian Herb Elliott the 1500m.

In the Olympic pool the Americans recovered from the Melbourne edition four years previous and the Australian raid on medals by winning nine gold as opposed to five by the Aussies.

On the hockey field India let the gold slip for the very first time losing out to their bitter rivals and northern neighbours Pakistan.

Motor-mouthed American boxer Cassius Clay launched his memorable career at the Rome Games winning gold in the light-heavyweight division.

Clay, later a renowned civil rights orator, threw his gold medal in a river on his return to the US after being refused admission to a whites only restaurant in the racist segregation marred America of that time.