Won the Olympic marathon barefoot, then kept competing after a car crash left him paralysed
A soldier in the Ethiopian imperial guard who won the 1960 Olympic marathon in Rome without shoes, the first Black African Olympic champion, and…
Survived the Holocaust with false papers, won five Olympic golds at 31 and 35, and lived to 103
Banned from her sport as a Jew and hidden as a maid during the war while her father was murdered at Auschwitz, she became the oldest gymnast to win…
Lost both legs in a racing crash and won four Paralympic golds on a handbike
A Formula One and Indycar driver who nearly bled to death after a 2001 crash, he went back to racing cars with hand controls, then took up…
The first Black player to win a Grand Slam, a decade before Arthur Ashe
A Harlem truant who was barred from most tournaments because of her colour, she won Wimbledon and the US Championships twice each in the 1950s and…
Burned over a third of her body in a household fire, she came back to win two world titles
An Olympic 800 metres medallist who suffered terrible burns in an accident at home while seven months pregnant and lost her baby, she returned within…
The first Black man to win Wimbledon, who spent his final year fighting for people with AIDS
Barred from the courts of his home city as a boy, he won three Grand Slam titles, then after contracting HIV from a blood transfusion used his last…
Barred from first-class cricket by apartheid, his selection for England helped isolate South Africa
Classified as Coloured under apartheid, he could only play on rough township grounds until an English radio commentator got him a league contract,…
Lost both arms and both legs to meningitis at 11 and became a Paralympic fencing champion
A child fencer from Venice who nearly died of meningitis, she is the only fencer in the world to compete at the top level without either hand, and…
The first women's Olympic 100m champion, presumed dead after a plane crash, who came back to win again
Spotted running for a train, she won Olympic gold at 16 in only her fourth race. Three years later a plane crash left her in a coma and barely able…
Won 39 Grand Slam titles and fought for women to be paid the same as men
One of the greatest tennis players of any era, she founded the women's tour, beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, and lost her sponsors when…
Given months to live with cancer, he won the Grand National on a horse that had nearly been put down
A jump jockey diagnosed with cancer in 1979 and put through brutal chemotherapy, he set himself the target of riding Aldaniti, a horse recovering…
Won World gold at 18 and then spent years fighting to be allowed to run as herself
A teenager from Limpopo who ran an astonishing 800 metres at the 2009 World Championships, only to be subjected to sex verification testing and years…
Lit the Olympic flame in Sydney and ten days later ran the race a whole nation was waiting for
An Aboriginal girl from Queensland who was once denied a medal because of her colour, she carried the weight of a divided country into the 400 metres…
A falling barn door broke her spine at 13; wheelchair racing gave her 14 Paralympic golds
Paralysed by a childhood accident with an old barn door, she took up wheelchair racing on a teacher's suggestion and became one of the sport's…
Learned to swim at 16 after watching the Paralympics on television, and won 27 medals
Born with malformed arms and legs, he did not enter a pool until he was a teenager, then became the most successful male Paralympic swimmer of his…
Quit racing in disillusionment at 18, came back and won four golds in a week at London 2012
Born unable to use his legs, he walked away from wheelchair racing after a dispiriting first Paralympics, returned years later and became one of the…
Paralysed by a spinal tumour at 29, she became the first Indian woman to win a Paralympic medal at 45
An army officer's wife who lost the use of her legs after surgery for a spinal tumour, she took up sport in her late thirties and won Paralympic…
Rejected by the national team for being too short, she won four Olympic table tennis golds
At just 1.5 metres tall she was told she had no future in table tennis. She became the dominant player of the 1990s, then went from having no formal…
The first Black African woman to win Olympic gold, who won the New York Marathon at 37
A farmer's daughter from the Ethiopian highlands who won the Olympic 10,000 metres in 1992, won it again eight years later after having a child, and…
Sent to France at five, a late starter who won the Champions League and helped stop a civil war
An Ivorian striker who did not become a full professional until his twenties, won everything with Chelsea, and used a live television broadcast to…
Ran the first marathon under two hours and kept living in a training camp with no running water
Raised by a single mother in rural Kenya, he was left out of his country's Olympic team at 27, switched to the marathon and became the only man to…
A five-time Paralympic swimming champion who won her first two golds at 13
Born with achondroplasia, she moved across the country as a child to train, won two Paralympic golds in Beijing at 13, and became one of the faces of…
Won three golds in eight days at one Olympics, then was sent to work in a uranium mine
A shoe factory worker who invented his own brutal training and won the 5000 metres, 10,000 metres and marathon at Helsinki in 1952, and lost…
Refused to run on a Sunday, won Olympic gold in a different event, then gave it all up for China
The Scottish sprinter who gave up his best event on principle at the 1924 Olympics and won the 400 metres instead, then spent the rest of his life as…
