Just a Reminder about Emil Zatopek

Thank you very much for these quotes!

What a wonderful person Emil Zátopek must have been. And as a sportsperson, he will be forever one of the all-time greats.

When Emil Zátopek ran over 20.000m in 1 hour in 1951, only five other runners had ever broken 30 minutes for 10.000m!

Thank you.

It's interesting to think about how he did intervals and how not too much has changed since he started doing that type of training. I was reading an article the other day, and in it, Haile Gebreselassie stated how one of his favorite workouts(this was some number of years ago) was doing 50 x 400m @ 63. I don't know how much rest he got, but Zatopek would do 50 x 400m workouts also(not as fast probably), and I don't know how much the Fins had explored that type of training, but it obviously was a good workout. He was also his own coach and a lot of workouts he did he came up with himself. He knew he needed speed and endurance, which is why he started doing intervals in the first place.

My favorite story is Emil giving Ron Clarke a package after a 1966 visit and telling him "This is for you Ron, not in friendship, but because you deserve it" and not to open it until after they part. Inside was Zatopek's 10,000 Olympic gold medal from Helsinki.

Wow. What character and class.

thanks for starting this thread.

yesterday i ran a long run with 2 friends and zatopek came up. his training, sportsmanship and friendship with ron clarke were with us during our run. catching this thread today is very cool.

best to you irun and zatopek fans.

I have known of this story for a while, I forget where I first read it. But I just found an account which includes (and this was a revelation for me) Clarke's reaction:

there is an account of the zatopek/clarke meeting in kenny moore's "best efforts". the story was in sports illustrated february 1973 called "but only on sunday".

i read the frank horwill article where one of horwills runners told horwill that geb told horwills athlete that gebs favorite workout was 50x400 at 63 with 30 seconds or 100 meter jogs. so 20k of intervals at his 10k pace.

Here is a wikipedia link about Zatopek, but the real treasure is at the bottom, where there is a link to the last 400m of the 1952 Olympic 5000m final. I think there is some other media on the internet with footage of Zatopek racing, but this one was easiest to access.

here is another interesting snippet about the great man

I read an interesting story about Emil Zatopek in the book Running with the Legends, which gives a great insight into the character of Emil Zatopek that reminds me a great deal of many of the leaders within Team. It was the night before the 10,000 meter final at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952. While he was in bed sleeping and preparing for his race the next morning, he heard a knock at his door. He sluggishly got out of bed and went to the door to see who was there. He was greeted by a reporter who did not take into consideration the fact that Emil is a superb athlete that is competing in the gold medal race the next morning that desperately needs to sleep to prepare for his race. The reporter was after his story and only thinking of himself and not Zatopek. Zatopek, however, did not mind. He invited the reporter into his room and gave him the interview of a lifetime. As the interview winded down and the reporter was getting ready to leave, Zatopek realized that the reporter did not have a place to stay. So Zatopek did what no other Olympic Athlete would do, he offered the reporter his bed the night before his race. You can imagine how most athletes would respond if this happened to them. Many would slam the door in the reporters face yelling obscenities and then they would blame their poor performance in their race on the reporter that woke them up at 2:00am in the morning the night before. Not Emile Zatopek. He graciously gave his bed to the reporter who had no place to sleep after giving the young reporter a stellar interview that he would remember for a lifetime. The next morning, Emile Zatopek went out on the track and devoured his competition and won the Gold Medal in the 10,000 meter event.

http://benjaminlachlan.terapad.com/

I knew what I'd read about Zatopek before was still right in mind. As a matter of fact, I undersoled Zatopek's tenacious will to work hard. From the above link, this fact was laid before me:

"Incredible, but true. In 1948 he started running sixty 400-metre intervals a day, with only a 200-metre jog in between. In 1955 he trained harder than ever, running as many as ninety 400-metre intervals daily."

- Sri Chinmoy on Emil Zatopek

Do you think Bekele, Gebreselassie, or Komen ever did 90 x 400m in a day? That's 22.5 miles of interval work, not including the 200m jog between each one. That's either physiologically impossible or the product of an insane athlete.

"incredible but true" statements about Emil Zatopek:

Zatopek's father discouraged the young boy like anything in his running. He even went to the extent of saying, "Sports is an unnecessary time waster. If you've got nothing to do, go to the river and fetch catkins for my bees!"

Zatopek himself had very little interest in running when he was in his teens. Incredible, but true. He was a very slow runner. Incredible, but true. His friends used to mock him because of his slow speed. Those friends, when he became Olympic champion, said: "Emil, you are a genius." Perhaps he was not born with natural ability. But by virtue of his indomitable will, he granted his body a supernatural capacity.

In 1939 he was working in a shoe factory that sponsored a race in the streets. Although the 16-year-old Zatopek was not very enthusiastic about running, he finished second out of hundreds. Incredible, but true. In 1946 the dauntless athlete bicycled 180 miles to Berlin for his first international race — a 5,000-metre run — and won it.

Zatopek was the first to run 10,000 metres in under 29 minutes and 20,000 metres in less than one hour.

On 29 September 1951, the miracle-runner set out to run 20 kilometres in one hour and broke four world records in one breathtaking race. By the end of 1953 he held eight world running records — the only man in history to hold so many records at the same time.

As a soldier drafted into the Czech army, the young Zatopek trained sometimes in heavy boots, with a full back pack. After his star performance in the 1948 London Olympics, Zatopek was promoted to captain. 64

In his first marathon attempt, in the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games, the fearless runner paced himself with marathon world-record holder Jim Peters, and then relentlessly increased the pace until his competitor was forced to drop out. Zatopek went on to win the gold medal and set a new Olympic record.

Zatopek is the only Olympian ever to win gold medals in all three long-distance races: the 5,000-metre, the 10,000-metre and the marathon

The unbelievable Zatopek won every 10,000-metre race he entered between 1948 and 1954 — 38 at a stretch.

Zatopek was the first athlete to be awarded Czechoslovakia's Order of the Republic, its highest honour.

The amazing Czech held the world record for every distance between 5,000 and 30,000 metres at various times in his unprecedented career. He was not only a striking but also a winning running-machine. All over Europe he was winning the distance races. In all, he set eighteen world records.

I'm pretty sure Emil Zatopek was the original Bill Brasky.

In 1956 I was competing in the modern Pentathlon in Melbourne. I went to the practice track in the village one day and saw this guy running fairly slowly around the track so I joined him for a few 7 to 8-minute miles. We talked about lots of things, but little about running. We introduced ourselves and when he said he was Emil Zatopek I really wondered why he was so willing to run these laps with some weak-runner pentathlete. I remember how humble he was and how slowly we were running. I still remember some of the conversation.

irun wrote:

"incredible but true" statements about Emil Zatopek:

Zatopek is the only Olympian ever to win gold medals in all three long-distance races: the 5,000-metre, the 10,000-metre and the marathon

This is not true, Hannes Kolehmainen also won gold medals in these three events (but for sure not in the same Olympic Games).

Zatopek was anything else but a "natural talent", His 1500m PB was only 3:52,8, which even back in the late 1940s was not a very good time. But what has he achieved with this "missing talent"!

i think the statement about Zatopek winning 3 golds in the long distance races(5000m, 10000m, marathon) was intended to be understood in the context of the same Olympics. it's just not articulated very well by sri chimnoy.

irun wrote:

Zatopek was the first to run 10,000 metres in under 29 minutes and 20,000 metres in less than one hour.

EZ ran 20K under 60 before anyone but himself ran 10K under 30.

quote]just the facts wrote:

irun wrote:

Zatopek was the first to run 10,000 metres in under 29 minutes and 20,000 metres in less than one hour.

EZ ran 20K under 60 before anyone but himself ran 10K under 30.[/quote]

if letsrun exsisted in emil's prime.....