Today We Die a Little!: the Inimitable Emil Zátopek, the Greatest Olympic Runner of All Time

497 Pages·2016·11.342 MB·English

by  Askwith, Richard;Zátopek, Emil

TODAY WE DIE A LITTLE!
ALSO BY RICHARD ASKWITH
Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession
Running Free: A Runner’s Journey Back to Nature
TODAY WE
DIE A LITTLE!
The Inimitable Emil Zátopek,
The Greatest Olympic
Runner of All Time
RICHARD ASKWITH
Copyright © 2016 by Richard Askwith
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Typeset in India by Thomson Digital Pvt Ltd, Noida, Delhi
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
LCCN: 2016933228
ISBN: 978-1-56858-549-9 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-56858-550-5 (e-book)
Published in the United Kingdom by Yellow Jersey Press,
an imprint of Vintage,
20 Vauzhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
UK ISBN: 9780224100342
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Prologue: Th e curious incident vii
1. ‘Zá-to-pek! Zá-to-pek!’ 1
2. Th e Kopřivnice kid 8
3. Shoemaking 20
4. Th e soldier 46
5. Beginnings 67
6. Th e lights come on again 80
7. Love and death 97
8. Th e Czech locomotive 122
9. Mission: invincible 143
1 0. Fairy-tale Pete 158
11. Th e longest day 181
12. Th e people’s champion 194
13. ‘Today we die a little’ 218
14. Th e ambassador 232
15. Spring fever 259
16. Disgrace 276
17. Exile 290
18. In the drawer 313
19. ‘Say it ain’t so, Emil’ 331
2 0. Th e last lap 351
Epilogue: Gold dust 363
Sources 379
Notes 387
Acknowledgements 443
List of illustrations 445
Index 447
Photo section appears aft er page 180
Prologue
Th e curious incident
On a sun-scorched runway in Prague, a twin-engined
Československé Aerolinie airliner is waiting for
take-off from Ruzyně International Airport. More than
a hundred young men and women, the fi nest athletes
in the Communist state of Czechoslovakia, are bound
for Helsinki, a seven-hour fl ight away, where the XVth
Olympic Games will begin in nine days’ time. But there
is a problem. Th e brightest and best of them all, Emil
Zátopek, is absent.
Th e greatest runner of his generation – perhaps of
all time – is missing from the fl ight that is due to take
him to the Games that will defi ne his sporting life. He
is at the height of his powers: twenty-nine years old, a
world record holder, a reigning Olympic champion who
has lost only one of his last seventy races at his specialist
distances, with his sights set on an unprecedented and
never-to-be-repeated clean sweep of endurance running
events.
It is the most important journey of his life. And he is
late.
vii
today we die a little!
At least, that is how it looks. Emil’s wife, Dana, knows
better. A javelin thrower with Olympic ambitions of her
own, she is on the plane already, weeping. She knows the
real reason why Emil is not beside her. She knows that he
is engaged in a high-stakes game of ‘chicken’ that could
not just end his career but quite plausibly see him sent to
a labour camp.
It is Th ursday, 10 July 1952. Th e Iron Curtain that fell
across Europe at the end of the Second World War has
grown more oppressive in recent years, especially in
Czechoslovakia. Th e Communists seized power there
in 1948; a ruthless secret service, the Státní bezpečnost
(StB), has helped them keep it. By 1950, show trials had
begun. Th e most notorious, the Slánský trial, is still being
prepared, but already scores of enemies of the revolution,
real and imagined, have been executed. Tens of thou-
sands are under surveillance by the StB. And now, with
the Soviet Union preparing to take part in its fi rst ever
Olympic Games, the shadow of Stalin looms ever larger
over Czechoslovak life – literally so in central Prague,
where the world’s biggest statue of the Soviet dictator,
eventually to be nearly thirty metres high (if you include
the base), is under construction.
No one is immune from the obsessive and brutal
enforcement of political conformity. Athletes of all kinds
have been among those rounded up in the purges. You
don’t have to be guilty of anything: just out of favour.
It is less than eight months since the entire national ice
hockey team was arrested, on the evening of its depar-
ture to London to defend its world title. Twelve players
were condemned to camps for, supposedly, contemplat-
ing defection (and, in some cases, singing disrespectful
viii
prologue
songs); the combined total of their sentences was
seventy-seven years and eight months.
By those standards, the problem with Stanislav
Jungwirth, Emil’s teammate and a future 1,500m world
record holder, is a trivial one. Stanislav himself is not in
trouble. It is Emil’s response to the problem that is poten-
tially catastrophic. Stanislav’s father is in prison for polit-
ical off ences – and that, the Party has decided, makes
it inappropriate for Jungwirth junior to travel abroad,
except to other Warsaw Pact countries. It is a modest
restriction; unless, like Jungwirth, you are an Olympic
athlete who has spent the past four years dreaming of
Helsinki.
News of Jungwirth’s exclusion emerged the evening
before the athletes were due to fl y, when they turned
up at the Ministry of Sport to collect their travel docu-
ments. Jungwirth was devastated to fi nd that there were
none for him, but quickly accepted that making a scene
would only make matters worse. But Emil was incandes-
cent. ‘No way,’ he told the offi cials. ‘If Standa does not go,
nor will I.’ Th en he stormed out, leaving his paperwork
behind him.
Th e next day, on the morning of the fl ight, Jungwirth
implores Zátopek to calm down. Emil insists on stand-
ing his ground. He gives Jungwirth his team outfi t and
tells him to return it to the Ministry when he returns his
own. Th en he goes off to train alone at Prague’s Strahov
stadium. 
Th e stand-off continues for days, by which time the
plane has long since left without Zátopek. Dana is incon-
solable: the stress causes her to lose her voice. It is barely
a decade since her own father was taken away by the
ix