Emil Zatopek

Emil Zátopek was a Czechoslovak long-distance runner, born on September 19, 1922, in Kopřivnice, Moravia, and died on November 22, 2000, in Prague. The son of a carpenter and the seventh of eight children, he worked at the Bata shoe factory in Zlín, where he was forced into a company race in 1941 and finished second among more than a hundred entrants, beginning a career he had not chosen for himself.

Joining the Czechoslovak army after the Second World War, he trained with what became known as interval training, running repeated 400-meter segments in numbers and conditions other athletes considered impossible. The method paid off at the 1948 London Olympics, where he won gold in the 10,000 meters and silver in the 5,000 meters.

At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, between July 20 and 27, Zátopek accomplished a feat unmatched before or since: he won gold medals in the 5,000 meters, the 10,000 meters, and the marathon, the latter his first competitive marathon ever. His wife Dana Zátopková, born the same day in 1922, won gold in the javelin throw on July 24, the day after his 5,000-meter victory. He set eighteen world records over distances from 5,000 meters to 30 kilometers.

Following his vocal support of the 1968 Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion that crushed it, Zátopek was expelled from the Communist Party and demoted to manual labor in uranium mines and as a garbage collector. He was rehabilitated only after the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

The name Emil derives from the Roman family name Aemilius, traditionally linked to the Latin aemulus, meaning "rival" or "emulator." He wore it as a runner who outran every rival in his discipline.