Shambel Abebe Bikila was an Ethiopian marathon runner who was a back-to-back Olympic marathon champion. He was the first Ethiopian Olympic gold medalist, winning his first gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome while running barefoot. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he won his second gold medal, making him the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic marathon title. In both victories, he ran in world record time. Abebe Bikila (Ethiopia) set the men's marathon world record of 2:12:11.2 in Tokyo Olympics, Japan on October 21, 1964. It stood 8 months, until Morio Shigematsu's 2:12:00 on June 12, 1965. Wiki link