Emil Zatopek, who died on November 21st aged 78, was one of the outstanding athletes of the 20th century. In the years following the second World War, he lifted distance running to a new plane, dominating the discipline, while at the same time enjoying the awe, respect and affection of his opponents and a popular acclaim that has rarely been matched.
From the week he won his first Olympic title in London in 1948 until his last major race in Melbourne in 1956, he was the most instantly recognisable figure in world sport, sending colour writers deep into their simile banks as they struggled to describe his tortured running style. He ran "like a man who had been stabbed in the heart", "as if his next step would be his last", "like a man wrestling with an octopus on a conveyor belt".
Yet when the races were won and the head stopped rolling, a very different man emerged - a relaxed, gregarious figure with a captivating boyish smile, an aptitude for languages and an infectious enthusiasm for his sport.
He sealed his place in history over eight unforgettable days at the Helsinki Olympic Games in 1952, when he achieved the unprecedented (and since unequalled) feat of winning gold medals in all three classic tests of endurance running - the 5,000 and 10,000 metres and the marathon.
Emil Zatopek was born in Koprivnice, in Moravia, the son of a Czech carpenter who had little interest in the boy's passion for running. And the occupying Nazi authorities positively discouraged organised sport, but running tracks were not closed, and in the early 1940s in the town of Zlin, where he worked in the Bata shoe factory, the young Zatopek began to progress slowly in the 1,500 metres.
Soon after the end of the war, he was drafted into the Czechoslovak army. On sentry duty he might spend an hour running on the spot; in winter, he would put on heavy baseball shoes, or even army boots, and run through the snow-covered forests.
At the London Olympic Games of 1948, the first track final, the 10,000 metres, was considered the bailiwick of the Finns. No one was prepared for Emil Zatopek. He took over the lead from the Finn Viljo Heino, then world record holder, in the 10th of the 25 laps, and five circuits later unleashed a spurt that took him 10 metres clear. Heino simply ground to a halt. Emil Zatopek ran on, unchallenged, and won by three-quarters of a lap. It was the first track-and-field gold medal ever won by Czechoslovakia.
A few weeks after the Games, Emil Zapotek married the national javelin champion Dana Ingrova.
For the next three years he was the undisputed master. From 1949 to 1951 he competed in 69 long-distance races (a schedule that would be simply unthinkable for any elite runner today) and won every one of them. From his first race at 10,000 metres in 1948 to his 38th in 1954 he was unbeaten at the distance. He won the European 10,000 metres championship in Brussels in 1950 by a full lap, and the 5,000 metres by 23 seconds. He broke 18 world records at distances from 5,000 metres to 30 kilometres, and in 1951 he became the first man to run 20 kilometres in under an hour. He was, in short, a phenomenon.
Coming up to the Helsinki Games in 1952 he had his first serious brush with the communist authorities in Prague. A young 1,500 metres runner, Stanislav Jungwirth, was dropped from the Czech Olympic team because his father had been jailed for political offences; Emil Zatopek threatened to pull out of the Games and Jungwirth was reinstated.
On the first Sunday he took the 10,000 metres gold medal more or less as he pleased, shaking off his opponents one by one with his unwavering pace to win by the length of the straight. Five days later, in the 5,000 metres he accelerated into the lead on the final lap, however, with 300 metres to go, three men charged past him - Britain's Christopher Chataway, Herbert Schade of Germany and the French-Algerian Alain Mimoun, who had followed Emil Zatopek home in the 10,000 metres.
On the final bend Emil Zatopek pounced. With 150 metres to go, there were four men abreast and from that moment on there was no question as to who was going to win.
The story of the Helsinki marathon has entered legend: how Emil Zatopek introduced himself to the favourite, Britain's Jim Peters, at the start, and ran with him for the first hour; how he asked Peters if the pace was quick enough and, somewhat to his surprise, received the answer "No, too slow"; and how he left Peters and all the other leaders behind him to enter the stadium 2 1/2 minutes clear of the field. Wave upon wave of cheering rang out across the Helsinki rooftops as he completed the last 300 metres to win his third gold medal in eight momentous days.
Emil Zatopek went to the Melbourne Games in 1956 to defend his marathon title, but he was never seriously in medal contention and trotted home in sixth place.
He retired a national icon and a natural sporting ambassador for Czechoslovakia. He rose steadily to the rank of colonel in the Czech army. However, in 1968 he publicly welcomed the shift towards democracy promised by the Dubcek regime and roundly condemned the Soviet response as troops moved into Prague to re-establish communist control.
He was expelled from the Communist party and dismissed from the army. He was consigned to a series of manual jobs for various state departments until, after seven years of this ritual humiliation, he was given a desk at the Ministry of Sport, employing his language skills to monitor and translate sports periodicals from the West.
Emil Zatopek's achievements in athletics are indelible, but bare statistics cannot reflect the genuine affection in which he was held by his fellow competitors.
Late in 1968 another high-achieving record-breaker, the Australian Ron Clarke, left the Mexico City Olympic Games in deepest gloom: he had been the fastest long-distance runner in the world for a decade, yet in two Olympic Games fate, ill-judgment, altitude, or sheer bad luck had conspired against him, and his career was slipping away without a single gold medal to show for it. On his way home he stopped off in Prague to chat things over with his boyhood idol and long-time friend.
As they parted Emil Zatopek gave the Australian a small parcel, and not wishing to embarrass his host, Clarke did not unwrap it until he was on the plane. It was one of Emil Zatopek's Olympic gold medals, a gift from an athlete who had won four of them to a fellow athlete he just felt deserved one.
Emil Zatopek: born 1922; died, November 2000