DANA ZÁTOPKOVÁ

When Dana Zátopková of Czechoslovakia, in 1952 in Helsinki, won the gold medal for javelin and broke the existing Olympic medal, she did so by a large margin. Most world and Olympic records in track-and-field are broken by tiny fractions of time or distance. In the men’s 100-metre sprint, for example, new records are established, commonly, by an improvement of only one hundredth of a second; and new high-jump records by a mere centimetre. So Zátopkcová’s demolition of the old record was truly astounding: she beat the former mark by 4.90 metres, an eleven per cent improvement.

This was no flash-in-the-pan throw of a lifetime. Her Olympic victory was simply the result of fine talent and relentless training; and it was consistent with results she had achieved in earlier meets. Nothing can take away from the essential ingredients of her success, the hard work and the competitive fire. Athletes, if they are not daunted by the occasion, do rise to the challenge of the Olympics, often with a supreme effort. And Zátopková was certainly the kind of athlete to do so. Every­thing suggests that the event was hers to lose, judging on form. But on that particular day, at that particular hour, she had extra inspiration to do her best, from a quirk in the timetable.

The javelin event cannot be safely scheduled when a race is taking place on the track. Most throws are accurate, slicing through the air in the centre of the infield. But there is always the possibility that a misthrown javelin could go wildly astray onto the track and, in the worst-case scenario, could kill a runner. Accordingly, while the women javelin-throwers were getting ready in the warm-up field next to the stadium, inside the stadium the men’s final was being run in the 5,000 metres. As it turned out, this was one of the three greatest races ever run at that distance (the other two being Kuts v Chataway in London in 1954, and Viren v the world in Montreal in 1976), and the commentary on it on the P.A. system was audible in the adjoining warm-up field. It may be that the other javelin-throwers were able to ignore it, to concentrate on their warm-up. She could not. Her heart was in the stadium, not on herself: for on the track, in a hard-fought race, was the defending champion, her husband, Emil Zátopek.

His task, that day, was a formidable one. Although famous for his speed on the last lap, he was faced with younger men whose finishing kick was a daunting obstacle. The necessary tactic, therefore, was to force a punishing pace throughout that would take the sting out of their finish. This was a tactic he could afford to employ because he had a vast reservoir of stamina to draw on, built up in monumental workouts. In the event, everything seemed to be panning out as planned. He entered the last lap and accelerated with only three challengers remaining on his heels, Mimoun, Chataway, and Schade — the rest of the field was far behind. But then, as they rounded the bend into the backstretch, the other three all sprinted past him. Apparently, his tactic had failed. At that point, a lesser runner would have conceded the race. Zátopek, however, tucked in behind them and hung on to their ferocious speed. Somehow, going round the final bend, he found an extra gear, like an overdrive, never before witnessed, and pounced on them, running wide on the curve and streaking ahead to the finish line in an historic victory.

That was what Zátopková had to listen to while trying to warm up in the adjacent field. No sooner was it over than the officials called the women to the infield for the javelin event; and it so happened that she was scheduled to be the first thrower. Filled with jubilation and with a huge burst of adrenalin, she grabbed her javelin, charged up to the throwing-line, and flung it an immense distance, to a mark that none of the other women, afterwards, could get remotely near. She had settled the matter right there, with the first throw.

Inevitably, Dana’s moment of glory was overshadowed by Emil’s immediate and enduring fame. Having won the 5,000 metres and, a few days earlier, the 10,000 metres, he went on to win the marathon a few days later — a triple win never matched by another runner, before or since. He broke world records eighteen times. And in one continuous stretch of supremacy, he was undefeated at 10,000 metres for six full years. Naturally enough, coming from a small country and competing against other countries with enormous talent-pools, he enjoyed the status of a national hero. Dana stayed in the background, a respected athlete in her own right; but she was mostly content to play the traditional role of supportive wife.

Emil continued to compete until 1957, ending with another marathon victory. After retiring, he served as a goodwill ambassador, notably to Expo 67 in Canada, and before that to Indonesia, where his experience and know-how helped develop a track program for would-be Olympians. On these journeys, Dana had to stay home as a hostage, so to speak, to guarantee his return; for he had always been somewhat of a free spirit, and the Communist authorities in Czechoslovakia were afraid he might defect while abroad. This even though he owed his career to them, having been able to devote himself full time to training, while ostensibly serving in the army — as success followed success on the track, he had been gradually promoted from private to colonel. Granted, he had no illusions about the regime’s overall goodwill. But in fact he was most unlikely to have abandoned his wife or his country. Like most Czechs, he had a passionate attachment to his native land. And that loyalty became strongly evident in 1968, when Russia sent in the tanks to crush the reforms of the Prague Spring; he took to the streets, denouncing the invasion, and using his fluent Russian (one of his nine languages) to confront the invaders. For taking such a stand, he was highly esteemed as a patriot by the many citizens who had long revered him as an athlete.

That esteem, however, was not everywhere whole-hearted or unbegrudged. There were fellow-Czechs who viewed him as having been a willing front-man for the regime; and the regime was widely detested. He was probably not held especially to blame for accepting favours from the authorities, at least to begin with: after all, nearly everyone’s livelihood depended on the government, directly or indirectly, since every part of the economy had been nationalized. But if at first Emil was not thought ill of on that account, since almost everyone was in the same boat as he; there did come a time when his generally good reputation was tarnished by a serious faux-pas on his part: he allowed his signature to be affixed to a published letter that endorsed one of the regime’s most vicious atrocities in its repression of dissent. Whether he actually wrote the letter is not entirely clear. But even if he did not, even if he was pressured into signing it (the regime was expert in the use of threats), the fact remains that his endorsement was an act of equivocation unworthy of any true hero.

Judgment must be suspended, though. We can forgive, or at least understand, most people who fall short of heroism when living under a tyranny. Why should we expect anything more from someone who happens to be a sporting idol? All we can fairly say, in the end, is that while Emil Zátopek was an ambiguous figure politically, he remains for ever an unsullied icon among distance-runners: a pioneer, a peerless competitor, and a generous friend to his fellow-athletes.

Emil’s career had momentous ups and downs. The Helsinki Olympics were an extraordinary high point. Seventeen years later, he was in official disgrace for the stand he had taken against the Russian invasion; they threw him out of the army, but first reduced him from colonel to private, so that his pension would be minimal; then they gave him a job as a garbage-collector. Through it all, Dana stood by him, rock-loyal. Theirs was a devoted marriage, and he always spoke of her with love and admiration. One of his favourite stories about her reflects the kind of integrity, in her, which paralleled the integrity that was manifest in him, athletically, whenever he set foot on the track, either in training or in competition.

It was when Dana was about fifty. Czech performances in women’s track-and-field had become sadly lacklustre. She was asked to return to the sport as coach to the javelin-throwers. They were a dispiriting bunch of young women, with an attitude at once casual and sullen, who were simply filling in time in a subsidized sport that was more agreeable than working in a dead-end job. In Dana’s view, they were appallingly devoid of a true work-ethic; and she saw it as her task to try and light a little fire in their bellies. Cajoling and chiding did not seem to produce results. Perhaps, she thought, they might be stirred out of their torpor by the force of example. So, “Oh for God’s sake,” she exclaimed, grabbing a javelin, “do it like this!” And she charged up to the throwing-line, as though Helsinki was but yesterday, and hurled the javelin far beyond the best mark of her squad: incredibly, she matched the distance that had won her Olympic gold as a girl. And this she did without any warm-up, and not having thrown for years. Inevitably, it wrecked her shoulder, and she never threw again. But it got the point across: the squad was shamed into making a real effort at last. What young woman wants to be outdone by someone old enough to be her mother?

In old age, in Prague, Dana and Emil enjoyed a contented retirement. The glory days of their youth were long behind them, and so were the vicissitudes of life under despots. They lived long enough to witness the freeing of their country from a stifling yoke, and its return to genuine democracy. They had been born, in 1923, in the heyday of the First Republic, when human rights, including the rights of women, had been guaranteed in the Czechoslovak constitution. In that respect, as in others, the Czechs and Slovaks were more progressive than most peoples at that time. In the Olympic movement, for instance, women were not allowed to compete until 1928; and even after that, they were long regarded as the weaker sex by the condescending males who ran the Games, so that it was many years before they were graciously permitted to compete in distance-races. In recent decades, the feats of women Olympians have punctured the paternalistic bigotry of old-time chairmen like Avery Brundage. And Dana Zátopková, wielding what is after all a man’s weapon, can be counted a sterling example of someone staking out her own terri­tory, and her place in history, with as much right to it as any man to his. She threw to gold, as Emil ran to gold, deservedly proud of it. They were a fine match.