Temple and his Tigerbelles: the brilliant sprint queens of Tennessee | Richard Williams
The legendary US sprint coach Ed Temple died this week, but the legacy of his protegees such as Wilma Rudolph and their place in American sporting and cultural history will live onIf you happened to catch sight of the Tennessee Tigerbelles on a grainy black and white telecast during the 1960 Olympic Games, you might – as an impressionable adolescent boy – have come to the conclusion that you had never seen anything, not even the Everly Brothers singing Bird Dog on The Perry Como Show, quite as stirring.Had the Tigerbelles been singers rather than athletes, they would have been the first girl group: before the Bobbettes and the Chantels, before the Shirelles and the Chiffons, before the Crystals and...