Like a Bat Outta Helsinki Trivia Quiz

Answer: He'd never run a competitive marathon

Emil felt uneasy about marathons, fearing what it might do to his body (he famously said at the start of 1956 marathon at the Melbourne Olympics "Men, today we die a little"). In the warm up to the Helsinki race he went forward to introduce himself to the British champion Jim Peters who was the then world record holder and pre race favourite for the gold medal. Peters accepted the handshake but gave Zatopek the competitive cold shoulder verbally. Halfway through the race Zatopek pulled alongside Peters, who was leading the race, and asked him "Is this pace too fast"? In an effort to kid the inexperienced marathoner he replied "No, it isn't fast enough". Zatopek responded by increasing the pace and in little time at all had disappeared from view. Emil won convincingly, set a new Olympic record and was carried around the stadium on the shoulders of the gold medal winning Jamaican 4 x 400 metre relay squad.

In an effort to catch Zatopek, Peters fell prey to cramp and ended up catching a ride to the stadium with a busload of journalist.

Answer: False

Zatopek often felt inferior and chose to avoid competitive running. Leaving school at fourteen Emil was fortunate to score an apprenticeship at the Bata shoe factory. The company sponsored an annual 1500 metre run through the town and encouraged their employees to compete. Each May Emil would take pains to avoid this event claiming "It was no place for me".

When he was eighteen years old his factory tutor ordered him to run, Zatopek feigned illness. Undeterred the tutor ordered a medical examination.

When Emil was given a clean bill of health he had little option but to run. Driven by anger and frustration at not being able to choose his own path, Emil, without training, finished second in a field of 100. He was immediately invited to join a local athletics club and a new desire was born.

Answer: Programmed interval (sprint) repeats

Emil's philosophy was "Why should I practise running slow? I already know how to run slow. I want to learn how to run fast". He studied the training methods of the great Finn runner Paavo Nurmi and deduced that running revolved around having enough speed for a longer duration than your opponent. "So you run fast for speed and you repeat it many times for endurance".
His training regime began with five 200 metre sprints, which he followed with twenty 400 metre sprints and then finished off with another five 200 metre sprints. When this produced marked improvement he increased the 400 metre repeats to fifty, which eventually became fifty repeats in the morning and fifty in the afternoon. Effectively he was sprinting 25 miles each day. Initially Zatopek was labelled a fool and crazy but when the results became evident in years to come the world soon adopted varieties of it.

Whilst fartlek running, with its variations of sprints and long runs may sound similar to Emil's technique bear in mind that Zatopek's regime was built upon structured repetitions and set distances whilst fartlek's nature is one of randomness.

Answer: He had to cycle 220 miles to reach the event

The race was held in 1946 (so Hitler could not have been there). The events, the Inter-Allied games, were of goodwill in nature and, as a symbol of strength, were conducted at Berlin's Olympic stadium. Of the Allies only Greece, Norway and the USSR chose not to attend and Emil Zatopek was the only athlete from Czechoslovakia. Without his government's assistance Zatopek found himself stranded in Prague. Ever the pragmatic one he decided he may as well jump on his pushbike and ride the 220 kilometres through Russian lines to get to the stadium. By his own admission Zatopek started too quickly.

This bought laughter from the 60,000 strong crowd and derisive shouts of "He is crazy, crazy". Zatopek revealed his remarkable stamina to the world and held on to win the 5,000 metre race.

The upshot of this victory was a vindication of his training regime and he saw this as a reason to increase his workload. He began running at night with a torch to guide him. He ran in army boots and all forms of weather, including snow.

He claimed that "it is better to train in unfavourable conditions, for the difference is then a tremendous relief in a race".

Answer: Ron Clarke

Clarke will be remembered as one of Australia's greatest distance runners and, during the 1960's, was one of the best in the world. Despite breaking seventeen world records during this period Ron could not translate this success into an Olympic gold medal.

His best effort was a bronze medal at the 1964 Tokyo Games. Zatopek was a great admirer of Ron and after Clarke collapsed at altitude to finish sixth at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games Emil invited the Australian to his home for two days. Upon leaving Emil presented Clarke with a small package with the words "not out of friendship but because you deserve it". By Clarke's own description, he didn't dare open it until he was on the plane fearing he might be smuggling something out of the country for the Czech.

He waited until the plane was airborne before unwrapping it and, even then, it was in the privacy of the aircraft's toilet. When he saw what it was he sat on the toilet seat and wept. It remains one of Clarke's most treasured possessions.

Answer: Silver medal

Three days earlier Zatopek had won the gold medal in the 10,000 metres race. His aim in that run was to break the world record by systematically running each lap in 71 seconds. His coach was to sit in the grandstand holding a white towel in one hand and a red in the other. If Emil fell behind world record pace his coach would signal by waving the red towel.

At a crucial point in the race Emil was engaged in a solid duel with Finland's Viljo Heino. It became tense and in his excitement Emil's coach began to wave the wrong towel. Emil saw red and immediately increased the pace.

He destroyed the field and won by a staggering 48 seconds. Some say that that effort must have wearied him for the 5,000 metre race while others point to him engaging in a needless sprint finish against Sweden's Eric Ahlden during the heats that were run the previous day.

The nay-sayers also indicated that the race was completed in pouring rain and that the dirt track that they were competing on had turned to mud and had taken the run out of the Czech champion's legs. Whatever the cause, Zatopek soon found himself 100 metres behind the race leader, Belgium's Gaston Reiff.

Then Zatopek surged and the crowd, sensing something, roared which served to spur Zatopek on. Suddenly he was thirty metres behind Reiff and, as they turned the bend, it was ten. Reiff sensed the danger and threw everything into a desperate lunge for the line and held Zatopek off by a mere two tenths of a second to secure the gold medal. The Guardian was to describe Zatopek's effort as "a performance that would have made him one of the immortals of the track on its own".

Answer: wife

Dana Ingrova was a member of the Czech team in London competing in the javelin event. She finished in seventh place. Whilst Emil knew of her it wasn't until they were in the confines of the Olympic village that their relationship blossomed. Dana had been born on 19 September, 1922, remarkably on the same day as Emil Zatopek. Zatopek visited Piccadilly Circus and bought two gold rings and proposed to Dana by saying " We were both born on the same day. What if, by chance, we were married on the same day".

They were husband and wife within two months. Emil proved to be an inspiration to Dana. She saw the lengths that he would go to and the sacrifices that he made to succeed and began to apply the same principles to her pursuits. Over the next four years Dana and Emil were almost unbeatable in their chosen fields.

The culmination of their duality was highlighted at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics where, on the day that Emil won gold in the 5,000 metres Dana won gold in the javelin. Zatopek claimed it was the most rewarding day of his career.

Answer: It's a rough road that leads to the paths of greatness

When Zatopek won the 10,000 metre gold medal at the London Olympic Games in 1948, The Guardian newspaper recorded "What made this race more extraordinary was the fact that Zatopek was the ugliest runner in it". There was nothing classical in the way Emil ran.

It (his style) didn't conserve energy, nor was it pleasing on the eye. The New York Herald Tribune said of it "Bobbing, weaving, staggering, gyrating, clutching his torso ...". In the heat of competition he appeared like a man in great pain, tongue lolling out, gasping for air and with his arms flailing, doing whatever it took to get him to the line. Zatopek's response to his detractors was "Running is not like ice skating or gymnastics, you don't need to smile and make a good impression on the judges". "It's a rough road that leads to the paths of greatness" is a quote by the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger.

Answer: False

In January 1968 Alexander Dubcek commenced a period of reform in Czechoslovakia, known as the Prague Spring, to grant certain freedoms to the people of his country and to divide the nation into the Czech and Slovak Republics. This was quashed in August of the same year when the Soviet Union invaded the country with the sole aim of killing these reforms.
Emil Zatopek was a strong supporter of Dubcek and continued to protest after the invasion for better living standards for his fellow countrymen. It cost him dearly. He was stripped of his rank in the army, expelled from the Communist Party and spent the next six years working in a uranium mine (hence the quote at the top of the question). Emil was also banned from entering the larger cities for fear that he would spread his brand of propaganda. When he accepted invitations to speak abroad he did so with a chaperone. He was eventually allowed to return to Prague to live and spent out the rest of his days with his wife in "modest contentment".
A year after the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia (1990) the government issued a public apology to Zatopek for the way in which his country had treated him.

Answer: Helped Roger Bannister to a sub four minute mile

Chris Chattaway and Chris Brasher were the two runners, who set the pace for two laps each to help Bannister be the first man to run a sub four minute mile on the 6th May, 1954. In 1952 however, Chattaway led Schade, Mimoun and Zatopek into the last lap of the 5,000 metre final. Zatopek heard the bell for the last lap, sprinted and caught the runners in a few strides ... but he couldn't shake them. In the next one hundred metres Chattaway surged past him and Schade was hot on Chattaway's heels. Not long later Mimoun loomed alongside the leaders and the three of them fought hard for both the lead and the inside running. Zatopek trailed two metres behind, seemingly spent. On the last bend Chattaway set himself for a final sprint when he heard the gathering roar of the crowd. Schade and Mimoun heard it too and bolted. Zatopek summonsed all his courage and, daringly, ran wide on the bend. Pumping hard and ignoring the pain he gathered the three runners in front and held then at bay to cross the line for the gold medal. He'd completed the last lap in an astonishing 57.9 seconds and shaved nine seconds of the Olympic record.
In the rush around the final bend Chattaway brushed the corner post causing him to stumble and he crashed to the track.
I must acknowledge the work Raymond Krise and Bill Squires from whose 1982 book "Fast Tracks - The History of Distance Running" I was able to track down the details of the above race.