Men, look out: it's the twenty-first century, and women are muscling into sports. Women athletes have been ignored for too long, and deserve a celebration of women athletes of the past. Wilma Rudolph is considered one of the most miraculous and celebrated female athletes of all time. The basketball player/track goddess was born in 1940, the twentieth of 22 children in a poor Tennessee family . Rudolph was born prematurely and suffered one disease after another. Even worse, she was diagnosed with polio and was told that she would never be able to walk. After overcoming this obstacle through years of rehabilitation, Rudolph decided to become an athlete. In her segregated junior high and high school, Rudolph competed in basketball and was discovered by a scout from Tennessee State University as she set state records and led her team to a state championship. Rudolph attended the university, not for basketball, but to run track. In 1956, Rudolph ran and won a bronze medal in the Olympic Games at the tender age of 16. Just four years later in the Olympic Games in Rome, Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals - all before age 20. Over the span of her athletic career, Rudolph was awarded 13 honors, and nearly half of these awards had only been awarded to men before Rudolph. Soon after, Rudolph started her own non-profit organization to promote sports, The Wilma Rudolph Foundation. She died in 1994 and in 1997, a day in Tennessee was proclaimed as Wilma Rudolph Day.