Emil Zatopek was an extraordinary athlete. He won the 10,000 metres track event at two different Olympic Games, a feat matched by only five other competitors in history. He was only one of nine athletes who have won the 10,000 and 5,000 metres at the same Olympics, which he did in 1952 in Helsinki. He is the only man who has won the 5,000, 10,000 and marathon at the same Olympics, a feat made all the more amazing as he only decided at the last moment to enter the marathon, having never run in one before. He was such a novice at the marathon that he decided to run alongside the world record holder, Jim Peters, who pushed him hard but when Zatopek asked him innocently during the race if the pace was right, his rival cheekily said it was too slow so Zatopek increased his speed and the world record holder later dropped out, exhausted.
He was a man who just seemed to be able to run and to run, more seriously in one degree than the legendary and fictitious character Forrest Gump but in other ways equally innocently and innocuously. After a hard day’s exercise as a soldier in the Czech army he went out running, in the dark, in the snow, in his boots; at other times, he loved to run with his wife, a talented athlete in her own right, except he would run with her on his back, carrying her! Why did he do this?
Most folk would view Zatopek as a great athlete, no question. The real question though might be, as Christopher MacDougall, in his book ‘Born to Run’ put it, whether Zatopek was a great man who happened to run or he was a great man because he ran. The fact is, Zatopek was a great man, even more than he was a great athlete, and he was a great athlete because he was a great man. In later years, after the great Australian long-distance runner, Ron Clarke, who held numerous world records but never won a major event, had visited Zatopek, he discovered Zatopek had put one of his 1952 gold medals in Clarke’s suitcase. Medals, titles, records meant little to Zatopek; what mattered simply was the running – and people. He loved to run and he loved to run with people.
McDougall, along with others before him, has tried to determine what motivated this man to run like that. Having interviewed many top athletic coaches who also sought such answers, he concluded that there was a strong connection actually between living and running, between the capacity to love and the capacity to love running. Zatopek loved to chat with the other competitors as they ran, which implied actually that “The reason we race isn’t so much to beat each other but to be with each other.” That goes against the generally-accepted view that we race in order to win, to beat the opponents; that competition is what is needed to push people further. It is not competition but compassion that enables great athletes to go forward. As others have said, “It’s easy to get outside yourself when you’re thinking about someone else”; that is all the motivation that is required. A passion for people and a passion for sport. We play sport to be with others, not to beat others.
The reason we put a lot of emphasis on team sport at school is obviously it has much to do with team work, a key component for life. However, what these great athletes have also shown is that it is not just team work but team mates that is essential. Children need to learn to enjoy their team mates – getting on with and working with people, treating them as people, enjoying them as people – as the old song goes, “people who need people are the luckiest people in the world”. Every school sporting event should therefore be a celebration of compassion more than of competition.
We might think that what made Zatopek extraordinary was that he actually loved to run; for many of us that is unreal. Many of our youngsters will be of such a view, wondering why on earth they must do PE, cross-country, even any sport when they hate it and are not good at it but the fact is that they may simply be missing the obvious point. We are born to live and we are born to run. We play sport to be with others, not to beat them; it is as simple and yet as profound as that! So, “Run, Forrest. Run” but also, “Fun, Robert. Fun”! Compassion, far more than competition, makes the man, and the man makes the athlete. It is the love of life that stirs up our desire to play sport. Coaches will do well to remember and reinforce that. That is how we will see even more extraordinary athletes and indeed people. If we think about that, then we also will have greater motivation to participate and compete in sport, and in so doing become better people.
