REMEMBERING AN OLYMPIAN
ONE RUNNER SHOULD NEVER BE FORGOTTEN.
Pierre de Coubertin brought back the Olympic Games at the end of the 19th century. His vision was a festival of stories to inspire, the marriage of muscular strength with the creative imagination. “Every human being belongs to the great orchestra of mankind,” he once wrote, yet some, through history, have played their parts greater than others; among them, Emil Zatopek at the Helsinki Games of 1952.
When Zatopek was a young Czech working in a shoe factory in Zlín during his early teens, he would return home to find his family’s Chinese geese waiting at the garden gate. He’d change, come out, open the gate and then Emil would run. The geese were slow starters, but as he ran he’d call to them. Eventually they gathered enough speed to take to the air, soaring above his head to the end of the road. “Geese are for fattening and for laying eggs, not for athletic events!” his mother would complain, but they were the only athletic games Emil knew when he was young; he came to running late.
Zatopek announced himself to the world at the London Games of 1948, taking gold in the 10,000m. Four years later, his Olympic year got off to a bad start when, almost 30, he became seriously ill with only six weeks to go. Ignoring the doctors, he arrived in Helsinki fit enough, he thought, to at least take part. He planned to compete in the 10,000m and 5,000m. He won the first. Two days later he won the second, beating the Olympic record by 11 seconds. Then, having never run the distance before, he announced to the world that he would compete in the marathon. Near the beginning of the race, he asked a fellow runner: “Excuse me, don’t you think we ought to go faster?” He won the race by over a minute and a half.
His achievements in Helsinki were matched by the demeanour and attitude to competition that made him an Olympian in the truest sense. He arrived late in Helsinki because he told his country that he would only go if they allowed another runner, whose father was an anti-communist activist and political prisoner, to go as well. The Czech authorities caved in three days after the Games had begun. In 1968, he protested against the Soviet tanks that rolled into Prague and was consigned to shovelling uranium in the mines of Bohemia for six years. But Zatopek was never afraid to endure a little pain: “It’s at the borders of pain and suffering,” he once said, “that the men are separated from the boys.”
Look out for more on Zatopek and the Olympic ideal in SUSOLOGY:The Origins Issue, illustrated by the ever brilliant Daniel Egnéus. You can view it here as well.
