Barefoot Gentile
Yes I know Bikila ran and won a marathon barefoot. A little fact about that race said:
I hope you're not suggesting that he went from shod to running 26.2 miles barefoot at pace sufficient to win at an olympic event with only the time from airport to race for transitioning?? Come on now. Clearly he must've done barefoot training to be able to accomplish such a thing.
No, he trained for the race barefoot. I got got this info from Wicki, which is a terrible site to source things but I will use it.
Adidas, the shoe sponsor at the
1960 Summer Olympics, had few shoes left when Bikila went to try out shoes and he ended up with a pair that didn’t fit comfortably, so he couldn't use them. A couple of hours before the race, Bikila decided to run barefoot, the way he'd trained for the race.