Emil Zatopek – How Grit, Innovation, And Sportsmanship Created A Legend
Article by Tait Hearps of Sweat Elite.
Given the enduring impact his pioneering of training techniques, ruthless self-experimentation and gregarious sportsmanship have had on athletics, precious little is known by most runners about Emil Zatopek. Known as the ‘Czech Locomotive’, Zatopek powered through his career in an unprecedented manner, leaving behind legacy of unmatchable achievements. But it’s in many ways his personality and his approach to the sport and his competitors that he has been remembered for, not to mention a quiver of endlessly relevant quotations.
Through the late forties and early fifties, Zatopek was almost invincible. During this period he set eighteen world records and won five Olympic medals, four of them gold. At the 1952 Helsinki games he became the first and likely the only person ever to take the Olympic distance treble – taking out the 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon in the space of a week. What’s more, the marathon gold was his debut at the 26.2-mile distance!
But it is not only these feats for which he is renown. Zatopek is considered one of the preeminent innovators of interval training. He developed a slew of outlandish training techniques that saw him rise to the top. Training that most people would balk at today. It was this training that really saw him develop fortitude and a jovial indifference to discomfort and pain that culminated in him being almost unbeatable on the track. “Pain is a merciful thing,” he explained. “If it lasts without interruption, it dulls itself.”
Once described by an observer as resembling “a man wrestling with an octopus on a conveyor belt,” Zatopek’s style was unorthodox. But he was notorious for unrelenting grit, not smooth running. “I shall learn to have a better style,” he retorted, “once they start judging races according to their beauty.” His was not an effortless lope that carried him smoothly across the track, Milne of Athletics Weekly once reported on a race: “He ran as only a Zátopek could run such a distance one moment looking like a super-tuned machine, the next like a fugitive from justice; grimacing painfully in one lap, smiling contentedly in the next, and finally winding up with a last lap that would have done credit to a first-class miler.”
Interval training wasn’t invented by Zatopek, but after a lull in its use by athletes during the period of WWII it was Zatopek who began to push its use to new extremes. When he first began his experiments with startlingly high-volume interval training in the forests of Stara Boleslav (often run in his army boots, through the snow and mud), contemporaries were appalled. ‘Everyone said, “Emil, you are a fool!”’ he reminisced. ‘But when I first won the European Championship, they said: “Emil, you are a genius!”’
At the time the use of such techniques was not standard practice. Emil was not known for his natural speed, and the training was aimed at running a fast pace, with recovery allowing repetitions and a gradual extension of the cumulative distance that could be run at that increased pace. “Why should I practice running slow? I already know how to run slow. I want to learn to run fast.”
What were these sessions that initially attracted such disdain? Steve Magness has a great article on his site The Science of Running, ‘A Brief History of Interval Training: The 1800s to Now’ which covers Zatopek’s training in great detail, as well as the progression of the use of interval training in the development of athletes. Here is an excerpt:
“His normal training however was a set of 400m intervals with about a 200m jog sandwiched in between five 150-200m repeats with the same jog. The paces are unknown for his intervals but they were said to vary wildly. In a couple of books by Fred Wilt (Run, Run, Run and How they Train) it speculates that the 400’s were between 67 and 77 seconds with the 150-200m repeats a little faster, but no one’s exactly sure. The key is that Zatopek ran by feel and varied the effort based on what he thought was right. A typical Zatopek workout was 5×200, 20×400, 5×200 with 200m jogs in between. Over the years Zatopek increased his training load to include more and more repetitions getting up to 20×200, 40×400, 20×200 with 200 jogs for a workout. The basis of his program was to develop what he called speed and stamina.”
Magness later raises a couple of important points. These 400m intervals sound gruelling and are greatly publicised as Zatopek’s trademark, but it’s important to note that these were not all done flat out. The early intervals would often serve as a warm-up and the later intervals as a cool down. Zatopek would favour a larger number of fast 200m intervals when trying to work more so on his speed, and shift favour to the 400s when focusing on stamina. He would also do longer jogging runs of 2 hours or more, as well as short sprints. “The majority of Zatopek’s training may have centred on the 400 repeats, but there were many other aspects to his training that showed Zatopek knew to work at a variety of paces and efforts.”
J. Armour Milne, a British Journalist, spent time in the Czech Republic whilst Zatopek was at the height of his powers. Emil was happy to divulge and share much of his training regime. Milne documented in Athletics Weekly the following mileage from 1954, which would be considered high even by modern standards.
January-600km
February-910km
March-935km
April-832km
May-780km
June-865km
July-712km
August-654km
September-600km
October- 600km
November-140km
December 260km
Total for year – 7,888km
There was a period in that February, when for 5 days in a row he ran 40×400m in the morning, and 40×400m in the afternoon (all with 200m jog recovery). One of those days he did 50×400m in the morning and then 40x400m in the afternoon.
Richard Askwith, who chronicled Zatopek’s life in the book Today We Die a Little, says “Zátopek’s training philosophy wasn’t just about pushing himself hard physically. It was about teaching his mind to shrug off pain and discomfort.” The training sessions were not only gruelling due to their volume, but they were often run in appalling conditions through the Czech winter. Zatopek explains, “There is a great advantage in training under unfavourable conditions… for the difference is then a tremendous relief in a race.”
Volumes could be written just on what Zatopek was recorded to have said, unburdening himself of wisdom relating to training, racing, suffering, sportsmanship and life in general. Here are just a few.
“It’s at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys.”
“When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly develops in ways more than physical. Is it raining? That doesn’t matter. Am I tired? That doesn’t matter either. Willpower becomes no longer a problem.”
The title of Askwith’s book comes from what Zatopek said to his competitors and comrades before start of the Olympic marathon in Melbourne, standing in sweltering conditions on the start line: “Men, today we die a little.”
Finally: “When it hurts to go, go faster.”
There is much to be learned from his willingness to experiment, push boundaries and endure discomfort, but it’s also his attitude towards his competitors that warrants study. There are many stories out there of his generosity and courage. Competing for Czechoslovakia in the post-WWII period, the world Zatopek inhabited was fraught with political tensions. Standing up for justice in solidarity with his teammate, he selflessly threatened to boycott the 1952 games when Stanislas Jungwirth was removed from the team after his father spoke out against the party. Given that Emil went on to win his fabled treble at those games, it goes without saying that selectors capitulated.
He had no secrets bar extremely hard work and ambitious goals. He willingly shared what he was doing with others. In the book ‘Why Die’ by Graeme Sims, a book about legendary Australian distance coach Percy Cerutty, Sims recounts a story about Zatopek. In the days preceding the 10,000m in Helsinki, Les Perry – a champion Australian athlete – sought out Zatopek hoping to garner some wisdom from the great man. Zatopek was honoured and invited Perry to run with him. This was followed by a meal in Zatopek’s quarters, with Perry eventually making it back to his room around midnight after fostering a great new friendship. The next day, Cerutty (Perry’s coach) went to visit and received the same welcome – when it got late Zatopek offered his own bed to the Australian and then slept outside in a sleeping bag!
Perhaps the most astounding story of all comes from Ron Clarke’s visit to Prague to see Zatopek in 1966, after both had concluded their illustrious running careers. Clarke’s brilliant career included 17 world records, but an Olympic gold medal had eluded him. Zatopek offered up his typical hospitality, and at the conclusion of the Australian’s stay he handed him a package as he was boarding his flight to leave Prague. Clarke opened the package mid-air to find an almost inconceivable gift – one of Zatopek’s Olympic gold medals. “Great is the victory, but the friendship is all the greater,” as Zátopek once said.
According to Askwith, Zatopek “was a figure of pivotal importance in the history of our sport. He embodied ideas that go to the heart of what it means to be a runner. Many of these are central to the ways we run today; others are less fashionable, but we forget them at our peril.” The way he conducted himself, on and off the track, garnered immense respect from his contemporaries, and to this day runners cannot help but marvel at his incredible work ethic and approach to training. He provides endless examples of how an athlete and a sportsman should live. Ron Clarke summed it up quite nicely: “His enthusiasm, his friendliness, his love of life, shone through every moment. There is not, and never was, a greater man than Emil Zatopek.”
Read more articles about 5-10km Training, Half Marathon Training and Marathon Training.
