Rick Broadbent - Endurance: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Emil Zátopek

To Debs, for her endurance

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Rick Broadbent is an award-winning journalist and author. He has been staff writer at The Times for 15 years and spent 200713 as the papers athletics correspondent. He has written nine books including That Near-Death Thing and Ring of Fire, both shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. He was also the ghostwriter of Jessica Enniss bestselling autobiography. He lives with his wife and two children in Dorset.

@ricktimes

Also by the author:

Looking for Eric

Seize the Day (with Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson)

The Big If

Rocket Men (with Ron Haslam)

Ring of Fire

Jeremy & Amy (with Jeremy Keeling)

That Near-Death Thing

Unbelievable (with Jessica Ennis)

Feel (with Freddie Spencer)

Contents

On 18 July 1966 a plane touched down on the black tarmac in Prague, and a bronze face peered from the oval window. Ron Clarke pulled his bag from the overhead rack, thanked the stewardess and emerged on to the steps into the Czech night. It took him a while to realise that the figure with his hand extended on the runway below was Emil Ztopek, older now, tufts of hair bookending a bald pate, but with eyes still alive and enquiring.

Clarke smiled. The Australian was a handsome man in his prime, with thick, jet-black hair and sun-smoothed skin. It was a fortnight since he had set the new 5000 metres world record in Stockholm and he was in demand. During his annual European summer tour, Clarke would run as many as 30 races in 50 days, but when word came through from the Czech Republic that Ztopek wanted to meet him, he changed his schedule. It was a meeting between athletics legends, and that pitted tarmac was actually a bridge across the generation gap.

Clarke was an amiable man prone to introspection, but resilience had been the sap that filtered down the family tree. His great-grandfather, Thomas Clarke, had been a gold miner in Victoria when the great Australasian mine was flooded by an underground river. The workers had continued to stave away at the walls as they knew they were close to a rich lode of gold, but the mine collapsed and water gushed in. Thomas escaped and spent 53 hours incessantly pumping water from the underground prison. Twenty-two men drowned but, as the scroll of honour that the Amalgamated Miners Association of Victoria later presented to him stated: Your almost superhuman efforts were at last successful in reducing the water, enabling the relief party to reach and rescue your five famished mates who had miraculously been able to survive, sealed up in a remote part of the upper level.

His son had also worked in the mines, and was crippled by them and then laid off from them, but his own son, Tom, Rons father, forged a new path as a sportsman, becoming a star in the religious fervour of Australian Rules football.

It could be said, then, that Ron Clarke came from the sort of stock that breeds champions. He had broken 11 world records in 1965 and was an elegant presence on tracks around the world, but it had all gone wrong at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Mining for his own gold, he had been the victim of one of the Games great upsets when Billy Mills, a half-Sioux Indian from the reservation and the Marines motor pool, had powered past him on the home straight of the 10,000 metres. That had been a brutal and physical race. Mohamed Gammoudi had clawed at Clarke and Clarke had shoved Mills off balance; when Clarke came home third, only a second behind Mills, he was sure that he would be disqualified. He smiled anyway because it had been a great race and Clarke liked running almost as much as he liked winning.

It got worse for him. In the 5000 metres final, Clarke led for 4000 metres but the tactics of his rivals upset his rhythm and belief. Damn it! he said to himself and mentally quit. He knew he should have roused himself and fought on but he couldnt. He was only ninth, and people began writing about his lack of a killer instinct. In the marathon he soldiered on manfully, but was a spent force, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. He was ninth again, but he had entered all three distance events and, really, who but Emil could expect to do that and thrive?

The cost of running intrigued Clarke. Ultimately, it was all about gold. Billy Mills success had even seen him rewarded with a ring forged from genuine Black Hills gold. The elders of the Oglala Sioux, the descendants of Crazy Horse and Red Cloud, gave it to him along with warrior status, something unprecedented for a half-breed. The flipside was those who failed: men like Kkichi Tsuburaya, the Japanese runner who had finished ahead of Clarke in the 1964 Olympic marathon but would suffer career-ending injuries and then kill himself by slashing his right wrist with a razor blade. The note he left said simply: Cannot run any more.

Clarke came from gold-mining stock, but had been left with only world records in his panning dish, and these feats rendered conflicting emotions. He called each historic mark a peculiar sense of disappointment and said the exhilaration would drain away, leaving only dejection and profound weariness. He likened it to turning 21 and finding out that, when the party ended, this milestone was much like any other.

So he was in Prague to meet a hero and find some answers. Ztopek had sent word that if Clarke would agree to run a 3000 metres race in Prague then he would meet him and, despite being some 15 years older, even join him on a training run.

Ztopek marched Clarke through customs, flashing officials a panoramic smile and waving to everyone. He was a terribly erratic driver, but somehow they made it to his home, where he introduced Clarke to Dana, his wife, and after an hour-and-a-half discussion on manifold subjects then took him to the track for the race.

Clarke was tired after his travel but he beat a man known locally as the Head Waiter and Ztopek took him to his hotel, cheerily informing him that he would pick him up tomorrow at 5.30 a.m. We went up to the small track in the woods, north of Prague, where he had run two successive 10,000 metres faster than almost anybody else had run one, [and] where he had set the 30,000 metres world record, Clarke recalled. He ran me hard through the hills and he was full of enthusiasm. He told me about Fartlek training and we spoke about lots of things politics, his early career and his training experiments. Clarke was pleased to hear Ztopek explain that he would run between lampposts holding his breath. Then he would try to make it to another lamppost. I did something similar back home in Australia, where Id try to see how far I could swim underwater. We had a really pleasant morning.

After the training, Ztopek said, You cant go home without getting some Czech crystal.

So he drives us down into the main street in Prague. Its lunchtime and there are policemen everywhere. Emil parks up and had this habit of being able to whistle loudly through his teeth. A policeman came charging up with his pad out ready to book him. Then he sees that its Emil Ztopek. Emil signs the pad for him and hands the keys to the policeman. We go into a couple of shops and I find a beautiful glass bowl that I still have. We must have been in there for about half an hour. Then we came out and there was no car. I look around and am a bit confused but then I hear Emil whistle again. Instantly, from nowhere, the car speeds up to us and the policeman gets out. I thought, This is really something, this is true fame being able to get an on-duty policeman to go off duty, park your car, wait for you while you go shopping and then bring the car back. Jeez. Then he took me to the airport and walked me through customs without stopping. He even took me out on to the tarmac and on to the plane again.