Emil Zátopek - Famous Czech Personality

Emil Zátopek - Famous Czech Personality

Emil Zátopek was born in 19.9. 1922 in Kopřivnice. His father worked like joiner in Tatra. He had six brothers and sisters. He was the fastest boy in the class and he ran to the teacher for snack at the brake. He played football too. After the basic school he went to the secondary chemistry school to Zlín. He liked this studying and working  in the factory, because he could his teoretic knowledge (for example about silk) quiet practised. It is uncredible, but till his nineteen years he didn´t run any race and he didn´t train the running. 

It was only chance what became his sports career: in the last year of studying got his class a new P.T. master, who was very strong. All boys had to run in The Sunday´s running of Zlín. But Zátopek didn´t want to run. He said, that he couldn´t run because he had bad his knee. But the teacher took him to the doctor and the doctor said, that he was healthy. The teacher was very angry and said, that he was lazy. The next day he ran very fast and he was second. After the race he was stopped by Tomáš Šalé, who looked for the talents in this race. He asked him, if he wanted to go to the stadion.Emil said yes and he became training. In turn he had no opponent in Zlín and then in the Czechoslowakia. The first confrontation with Europea´s runners was in 1946 in Oslo.It was Europea´s Champion Ship.

He ran there 5000 m and he was fifth.  Two years later, it was Olympic games in London, at first he ran 10 000 m. There was very good competition ( Heino, Albertsson, Mimoun); his course of win was 1:10. At the end Zátopek had very good finish and he won. Then he ran 5000 m;where he was second.The fasterst was Reif.  In 1950 was The Europea´s Champion Ship in Brusel. Before this champion ship he ran  10 000 m under 30 min. So he prefered at champion ship 5 000 m. It was the fight between Zátopek and Reiff. Reiff ran very quickly, he was first for a long time, but in the last round he was overtaken by Zátopek and Emil won.

In the next olympic games in Helsinki in 1952 he won three gold olympic medals and his wife Dana, who juwelined there, won one gold medal too. Emil ran 5 000 m, 10 000 m and marathon. The biggest problem was marathon, because he couldn´t ran slowly and he learnt three days to run slowly. But he had no problems to win. Than he won the 10 000m on Europea´s Champion ship in Bern. And he ran the olympic marathon in Melbourne in 1956.He was there fifth because two months ago he had operation of rupture so he had no training and not a lot of power.
He stopped his sport´s career in 37 years. In the 18 years his sport´s career he won four gold medals at three olympic games, two gold medals from European Champion Ship.He was 15x champion of our republic, He got over 18 world´s records and 61 czech records.