“It was time for me to start looking for a husband. “I had accomplished what I wanted to do,” Coachman said in explaining why she retired as an athlete after the London Olympics.

“You’re no better than anyone else.”Īnd Wembley Stadium in London was the end of the line. “From the very first gold medal I won in 1939, my mama used to stress being humble,” Coachman told William C. Some of it had to do with one of her gifts. Racism is not the only explanation for Coachman’s relative invisibility until recent years, however. Viewers could see with their own eyes what newspaper reporters and radio commentators of earlier eras did not necessarily emphasize.Ĭoachman was treated almost as a nonperson on her homecoming to Albany, Ga., forced to use a side door of the auditorium where she was being honored. In fact, he cast her victory not as a triumph for American women but as a “ disappointment” to Tyler’s British fans.Ĭoachman attributed Rudolph’s pre-eminence in the public mind to the fact that the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where Rudolph won three gold medals, were televised.

The correspondent, Allison Danzig, barely noted that Coachman had set a record. Sixty-six years earlier, however, The Times had not even mentioned the fact in its dispatch from London.

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