In Popular Culture
Bikila's victory at the 1964 Olympics is featured in the 1965 documentary film Tokyo Olympiad. Footage from that film was later recycled for the 1976 thriller Marathon Man.
Bikila was featured in the Bud Greenspan film "The Marathon". It chronicled his two Olympic victories and ended with a dedication ceremony for a gymnasium named for him shortly before his death.
2009 Atletu (The Athlete) is a film directed by Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew which focuses on the final years of Bikila's life: his quest to regain Olympic glory, his accident (the circumstances of which are changed), his determination to compete again. The film was shot in 35mm, from the Arctic Circle to the Equator.
In 2010, Vibram introduced the "Bikila" model of its FiveFingers line of minimalist shoes.
Robin Williams made reference to Bikila's barefoot running in his stand-up special "Weapons of Self Destruction", saying, " won the Rome Olympics running barefoot. He was then sponsored by Adidas. He ran the next Olympics; he carried the fucking shoes."
In 2010, the Rome Marathon celebrated 50 years of Abebe Bikila's Olympics Race. To honour him, Ethiopian runner Siraj Gena ran the last 300 meters of the race barefoot and won it (for this he was awarded 5000 euro bonus).
Read more about this topic: Abebe Bikila
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock and roll or Christianity.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“He was one whose glory was an inner glory, one who placed culture above prosperity, fairness above profit, generosity above possessions, hospitality above comfort, courtesy above triumph, courage above safety, kindness above personal welfare, honor above success.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)