Not about history! A detour into running with the life of Emil Zátopek…
Today We Die a Little: Emil Zátopek, Olympic Legend to Cold War Hero
Richard Askwith
This is a good book – throughly researched, well written, and evocative. The descriptions of Zatopek’s races and retelling of anecdotes about him are moving, sometimes surprisingly so.
The cliche of ‘99% perspiration, 1% inspiration’ seems a perfect fit to Zatopek’s race career. The inspiration was that running hard and fast in races meant running hard and fast in training too. (This was a break from the accepted wisdom of long, slow, endless miles). The perspiration is where he made himself great though – his training regime was brutal. Run 400m as if it is the final lap of the Olympic 5k. Do a slow jog for 150 metres or so. And then repeat. Again. And again. And again. Do it up to 100 times in a day. His mental strength is astonishing and comes to the front in all the examples given where he wins races, seemingly through willpower alone.
…and outside of running? Askwith has done his research, but I never quite felt I understood what made Zatopek tick. He is undoubtedly kind-hearted, generous, and impulsive. A lover of people and of tall tales, preferably with him telling them and starring in them! At the height of his fame he was feted for both his inhuman efforts on the track and his humanity off of it. I wish I could have read more about how these elements of his life interacted. What makes a man who can destroy himself to win, but then give away his medals on a whim, or risk it all to help a friend?
The political side of Zatopek’s life occupies the latter part of the book. What comes across is a decent man living during indecent times. He was a Communist, though probably with a small ‘c’ and without any deep interest in the theory. In his ideal world decent men would work together for the common good and that was that. Sadly post-1968 Czechoslovakia was not his ideal world and his heroism during the uprising was sullied later by his decency. He could easily have found his way to the West and raged from there, but that would have been cheating on his homeland. But by staying behind and being such a famous figure he could not help but be part of the system. Askwith has been through the secret police archives and found nothing of consequence, but even living close to such corrupt authority leaves a smell.
Moritasgus 