Emil Zatopek Biography

Emil Zatopek

(Koprivnice, 1922-Prague, 2000) Czech athlete.Four times Olympic champion, he has the honor of having achieved three gold medals (5,000 and 10,000 meters and marathon) in the same Olympic Games (Helsinki 1952), a feat that was not surpassed until the Atlanta 96 Olympics.Considered one of the great figures of 20th century athletics, his merits on the track earned him the nickname "The Human Engine".

Zatopek's impressive career began purely anecdotally, when he worked in shoe factories Bata, a company that sponsored every year a race in which the people were little less than forced to compete.Dragged to the starting line, he had no choice but to run and, to his surprise, he finished second, prompting him to participate in other races.He himself created his own training system, which consisted of doing short distances, which allowed him to gradually increase his speed.

Zatopek at the Helsinki Olympics (1952 )

At the end of World War II, Zatopek enlisted in the army to pursue a military career, and reached the rank of colonel.He became known in international athletics during the 1946 European Championships, held in Oslo, where he was fifth in the 5,000 meters.Two years later came the London Olympic Games, in which he won the gold medal in 10,000 meters with a new Olympic record (29 minutes, 59 seconds and 6 hundredths) that stunned the stadium public, and took silver in the 5,000 meters.In the four years prior to the Helsinki 52 Games, he broke the 10,000-meter world record five times, once the ten-mile, two the twenty-kilometer, and another two the hour and once the thirty kilometers.

In this second Olympic event, the Czech official once again became the only winner of the 10,000 and 5,000 meter events with world records (29 min, 17 sec, 0 cent and 14 min , 06 sec and 6 cent), which equaled the feat of the Finn Hannes Kolehmainen; He also won the marathon, a test he was running for the first time, with a new Olympic record (2 hours, 23 min and 03 sec).To top off the glory of these Olympics, his wife, javelin thrower Dana Zatopkova, added a fourth gold medal to the marriage collection.

He returned to the slopes in Melbourne in 1956, but the age and the injuries harvested in so many years of hard work held him back against the Algerian Alain Mimoun, who won the test with a formidable career that earned him the respect of the public and the former champion, who took off his cap to greet him from the sixth position in the classification.

Two years later, in 1958, he said goodbye to athletics on the tracks of Guipúzcoa (Spain) at the Lasarte International Cross, with a brilliant sporting record that also included of the aforementioned titles, eighteen world records in nine athletic specialties, broken between 1947 and 1950.

In 1997, when he was 75 years old, he was named "Best Athlete of the Century" during the international meeting celebrated by the atl association ethism "La Zapatilla de Oro".In his later years he worked as a Physical Education teacher and held his post in the army of the Czech Republic.He died in Prague on November 22, 2000 as a result of a stroke.