In His Own Words: Steve Larkin - You Should Care About Emil Zátopek



Steve Prefontaine Is Lame: You Should Care About Emil Zátopek Instead


I've seen Without Limits. It's inoffensive, if not particularly good. I've also heard the name of Prefontaine invoked enough times to have some idea why the cult of Prefontaine is still around. The reasons, as far as I can tell, are these: he was really good at running, frontrunning and making obnoxious statements about how you're going to beat everyone else by frontrunning are cool, and he died young. If the last means anything to you, go care about Joan of Arc or something. Getting burned alive by the enemies of France is a lot cooler than crashing your car while driving under the influence.* Also, making obnoxious statements about a "guts race" and the like really do look better when you actually win. At least medal. As for being really good at running, all kinds of people have been really good at running. A lot of them were cooler than Steve Prefontaine, but without the "mystique" of inventing American running** or living in a trailer. One such runner was Emil Zátopek.***


Emil Zátopek began running at 16 because some higher-up at his factory job told him to run a race. It happened that he was pretty good. As a result, he began to care about running and to train, and eventually he won two medals at the 1948 Olympics and, at the 1952 Olympics, won golds and setting Olympic records in the 5000m, 10000m, and marathon, a feat which no one else has accomplished. The marathon was the first marathon he had ever run. His strategy was to stay with the current record-holder in the marathon, who happened to go out too fast. About a third of the way through the race, Zátopek asked him what he thought of the pace, and received a reply that it was too slow in an attempt to psych him out. Since Zátopek had no idea how to pace a marathon, he merely sped up and eventually won.


Zátopek also appeared to be exerting great effort while running, which is more beautiful than looking effortless, and would pant while running, often audibly - here's looking at you, Erik. He would also train in work boots instead of running shoes (which, I assume, must have been helpful when running in snow.) He therefore earned nicknames such as "Emil the Terrible" and the "Czech Locomotive." These nicknames are beautiful and evocative, quite unlike "Pre," which is a lazy hack job by people who couldn't be bothered to think of an actual nickname.**** And perhaps it is in these nicknames that the choice becomes most clear: between "Pre" and the "Czech Locomotive," who would take the former?


*Have you learned yet that I'm going to high-handedly assume all the disputed propositions I want?

**Jim Ryun did this.

***All the facts in the remainder of this piece are from the Wikipedia article on him.

****The story of nicknames in American sport has been a story of continuous and unchecked decline. Where is the modern Bob "Death to Flying Things" Ferguson?