The Olympic champions Emil and Dana Zátopek are still unforgotten in the athletics world.
100 years ago, on September 19, 1922, both were born.
emily Zatopek saw in the North Moravian small town Koprivnice the light of day as the seventh of a total of eight children. dana Ingrova in Fryštát/Karviná. Zatopeks Father was employed as a carpenter in the Tatra Automobile Works, which was in Koprivnice to this day as a manufacturer of trucks. In the course of his athletic career, the runner Emil Zatopek a total of 18 world records and won a total of five Olympic medals, four of which were gold. He was the first person to run the 10 km distance in under 29 minutes and more than 20 km in an hour.
Zatopeks triple from Helsinki – unrivaled to this day
Emil Zatopek from the Army Sports Club Dukla Prague, who was Olympic champion in the 10,000 meters in London in 1948 and silver in the 5,000 meters Gaston Reif (Belgium) achieved something previously unachieved at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki. At the age of almost 30, he won first the 10,000 meters and then the 5,000 meters in just eight days Alain Mimoun (France) and the West German Herbert Schade from Solingen, with whom Emil and Dana were close friends until death.
Just an hour after Emil’s triumph, Dana won Olympic gold in the javelin throw. It was for the couple Zatopek the Olympic moment of glory. Finally, Emil also won the marathon over 42.195 kilometers in Helsinki. It was his very first marathon competition. All the successes made him a national hero.
In the past 70 years, no runner at the Olympics has managed to do this unique thing triple to repeat. At his third and last Olympic Games, in 1956 MelbourneEmil could only start in the marathon after a hernia, where he finished sixth. Fair play was always important to him in sport. One of his mottos was: “We were opponents on the dirt track, but after that we were mostly good friends. Friendship is higher than all the medals and diplomas.”
Protest against the invasion of the Soviet army
became famous Emil Zatopek also through his talent, his enormous willpower and his training hardship. It wasn’t until late, at the age of 18, that he competed in his first running competition. His unorthodox running style, with a face contorted in pain, a shaking head and sweeping arm movements, brought him the characterization “Czechoslovak locomotive” a. In fact, decades later, Czech Railways would name a locomotive after him.
Zatopek was used by the communist regime in Czechoslovakia as a propaganda figurehead and was sometimes happy to be used, was promoted to sports colonel in the army. When he protested against the invasion of the Soviet army and other Warsaw Pact states on Prague’s Wenceslas Square in 1968, this had serious consequences for him after the bloody suppression of the Prague Spring. He was thrown out of the Communist Party (KP) and the army and had to do hard physical labor for several years digging wells.
For the couple Zatopek it was the darkest time in her life. The Eastern Bloc media, especially those in East Germany, demonized Zatopek then as a counter-revolutionary. It was only with the help of his West German friend Herbert Schade that he was able to Zatopek travel to the West again for the first time – to the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Many more trips to the Federal Republic followed. Zatopek was monitored by the state security service StB there until the collapse of the regime in Czechoslovakia in 1989, as documents show.
Many commemorative events for the 100th birthday
In the Moravian original home of Dana and Emil, both lie in the honorary cemetery around 30 kilometers from Koprivnice removed Rožnov pod Radhostemthere for the 100th birthday of Zatopeks many commemorations. Including several fun runs, of course also for children.
In the city museum Koprivnice is next to the station at the beginning of August a permanent exhibition on the famous compatriot Emil Zatopek and has been opened to his wife Dana. curator Pavel Dvoraka studied historian, has tried “to depict many aspects of the lives of both personalities.” He was impressed that Emil and Dana, in contrast to many of today’s sports idols, have always remained modest and communicated with many people on an equal footing. In addition, both spoke several foreign languages, which made them popular interview partners all over the world.
With his pronounced Schweik-esque sense of humour, Emil always made people laugh when he told many of his anecdotes. “Dana and I were not only born on the same day and won an Olympic gold medal in Helsinki in 1952 on the same day. We even got married on the same day.” (in 1948, after the London Games). Then Emil laughed heartily. He and Dana built a house on the outskirts of Prague in Troy with their own hands, which they moved into in 1972. The only thing the two didn’t have children was apparently due to Dana’s serious infectious disease in the post-war years.
“Sport must not degenerate into a circus event”
After the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in November 1989 Zatopek rehabilitated. He died on November 21, 2000 at the age of 78. Dana, who in 2016 in her old age published a 400-page book about life together with her Emil, which she mostly wrote with her old typewriter, died on March 13, 2020 at the age of 97 in Prague.
Her father Antonín Ingr was interned by the Nazis in the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, but luckily survived. In an interview in Prague in September 2016, she told WDR Sport inside: “I watched the summer games in Rio on TV with enthusiasm and I have to say that the focus of the games should be on sport. We have to be even more careful today so that sport doesn’t degenerate into a circus event.” In 2021, the Czech director brought David Ondricek the cinema film worth seeing “Zatopek“ out, which will hopefully be shown in Germany soon.