Emil Zátopek

• Born: September 19, 1922
• Birthplace: Kopřivnice, Moravia, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)
• Died: November 22, 2000
• Place of death: Prague, Czech Republic

Sport: Track and field (long-distance runs and marathon)

Early Life

Emil Zátopek was born on September 19, 1922, in Kopřivnice, Moravia, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic, or Czechia). His father worked as a carpenter in a local shoe factory. The family was so poor that when Zátopek was a child, his father scolded him for running because it wore his shoes out faster than if he walked.

After graduating from secondary school, Zátopek considered applying to the teacher’s training school, but the competition for admission was so great that he felt he would not be accepted. Therefore, he worked in a shoe factory in Zlin and attended night classes at the Zlin Technical School. Originally, his job was to attach rubber soles to tennis shoes, but he was transferred to another department in which he ground silica to dust. This left him covered with the dust, which he breathed into his lungs. Aware that this was harmful to his health, he applied for a transfer, but it was denied.

The Road to Excellence

At first, Zátopek did not wish to be a runner. When his employer entered him in a race sponsored by the shoe factory, he tried to hide in the library to avoid running. When he was found and forced to race, he remembered his father’s motto: “A thing worth doing, is worth doing well.” Therefore, he did his best and came in second in the race. This display of talent so impressed his employer that he was entered in other races, and his career as a runner was under way.

After the Germans were driven out of Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II, Zátopek enlisted in the Czech army and entered officer training school. While the other cadets were relaxing during their free time, he used every available moment to train. He was so determined not to miss his workouts that he ran in the rain or through snow if necessary; sometimes it became dark before he finished and he had to use a flashlight to see the path he used for running.

Zátopek was one of the pioneers of a new type of training for distance running: interval training. Instead of doing long, slow runs in practice to demonstrate that he could complete the distance of the race, he did repeats of short distances at the pace he hoped to run in the race.

The Emerging Champion

Although his time in the 10,000 meters was less than two seconds off the world record, Zátopek was not the favorite in the event at the 1948 Olympic Games. Because he lived in a country behind the Iron Curtain, his times were not widely known outside Czechoslovakia. His first-place finish in the 10,000-meter race in an Olympic-record time at the 1948 Olympics changed that. When he followed his 10,000-meter triumph with a close second-place finish in the 5,000-meter race, he was recognized as one of the world’s best runners.

At the Olympics, Zátopek met Dana Ingrova, who later became his wife. Dana, representing Czechoslovakia, placed seventh in the Olympic women’s javelin throw. Less than two months after the Olympic Games concluded, Zátopek and Dana were married.

Although Zátopek was the best distance runner in the world by 1952, he did not expect to do well at the 1952 Olympic Games because he had been ill with influenza and had not been able to train properly. During the early stages of the 10,000-meter race, he stayed at the back, far behind the leaders, but when he surged to the front during the second half of the race, he left the other runners far behind and won in the Olympic-record time of 29 minutes 17 seconds. In the 5,000 meters, Zátopek appeared to have been beaten until he put on a determined kick in the last 100 meters, which brought him into first place.

Zátopek’s performance in the marathon was the most amazing of all. He had never run the event, he was tired from having run in two events already, and he had to compete against the world-record holder Jim Peters. During the race, he was so uncertain as to what pace he should run that he asked Peters if the pace were too fast. Hoping that Zátopek would speed up and wear himself out, Peters tried to trick him by telling him the pace was too slow. Zátopek did increase his speed but surprised Peters by maintaining the faster pace until the finish. In his first attempt at the distance, Zátopek not only won an Olympic gold medal but also set an Olympic record of 2 hours, 23 minutes, and 3 seconds.

Continuing the Story

In the years immediately following the 1952 Olympics, Zátopek continued to dominate distance running, setting world records at every distance from 3 miles to the marathon. Younger runners, however, imitated his training methods and, by 1954, were beginning to defeat him, especially at shorter distances. Although he had set a world record in the 5,000 meters earlier in the year in 13 minutes 57.2 seconds, he only managed third place in the 1954 European championships. After having been first in the world at 10,000 meters for seven years, he was ranked only fourth in 1955.

Zátopek responded to his decline by training even harder. He ran as many as ninety repeats of his 400-meter runs in a day. He even tried to strengthen his leg muscles by running with his wife on his shoulders. This plan proved disastrous, as he developed a hernia and could not run for several months. However, the incident was typical of his willingness to experiment with new training methods in order to improve himself. Though he participated in the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia, he ultimately did not medal, and he announced his retirement from competitive running in 1958.

Subsequent years of Zátopek's life were marked by turmoil, as he was essentially exiled and removed from public favor as well as the Communist Party after he was prominently involved in protests of the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Struggling to find work, he eventually found employment with a rural drilling company until he was permitted to go back to Prague. Working at one point for his country's national sports institute, he was formally rehabilitated in 1989. He later retired, and after suffering ill health, died in Prague on November 22, 2000, at the age of seventy-eight.

Summary

Emil Zátopek was famous for his awkward, ungainly running style. However, by training harder than his opponents and by using the new interval method of training, he became one of the greatest distance runners of all time. His legacy was still honored around the world in the first decades of the twenty-first century, including with the publications Endurance: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Emil Zátopek (2016), by Rick Broadbent, and Today We Die a Little: The Rise and Fall of Emil Zátopek, Olympic Legend (2016), by Richard Askwith.

Bibliography

Askwith, Richard. "Emil Zátopek.: The Greatest Olympian Vanished from Public Life after He Defied Russian Tanks in 1968." The Independent, 24 Mar. 2016, www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/emil-z-topek-the-greatest-olympian-who-vanished-from-public-life-after-he-defied-russian-tanks-in-a6951031.html. Accessed 27 Aug. 2020.

"Emil Zátopek." Olympic.org, www.olympic.org/emil-zatopek. Accessed 27 Aug. 2020.

Henderson, Joe. “Hero of the Half-Century.” Runner’s World 35 (January, 2000): 14.

Hirsch, George A. “Remembering Emil Zátopek: The Greatest Ever—1922-2000.” Runner’s World 36, no. 2 (February, 2001): 44.

Kozík, Frantisek. Zátopek, the Marathon Victor. Translated by Jean Layton. Prague: Artia, 1954.

Montville, Leigh. “A Winner at the Finish.” Sports Illustrated 93 (December 4, 2000): R8.

Phillips, Bob. Zá-to-pek! Zá-to-pek! Zá-to-pek! The Life and Times of the World’s Greatest Distance Runner. Manchester: Parrs Wood, 2004.

Sandrock, Michael. Running with the Legends. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 1996.