Endurance: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Emil Zátopek

Review by Luboš Brabec, 31 May 2022

Zatopek magazine is published in Belgium and the best race bearing Zátopek’s name is run in Australia, so it’s probably no surprise that a remarkable biography of the greatest athlete in Czech history was written by an Englishman. He’s Rick Broadbent, and his book is called Endurance: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Emil Zátopek.

Sports biographies, the ones without the prefix “auto”, don’t have much of a tradition in the Czech Republic. When one does appear, it’s usually a hastily stitched-together compilation of other people’s newspaper interviews and reports whose only purpose is to make quick money. Google and Wikipedia journalism. I won’t name names; they really don’t deserve the publicity.

Abroad, certainly in the English- and German-speaking world, the genre is much more prominent. And biographies of this kind aren’t only written about athletes who have passed away. Sometimes they’re an interesting counterweight to official, authorised biographies, whose subjects tend to embellish their stories or leave out events they’d rather forget. Or they retrospectively make themselves into bigger rebels than they really were.

Respected English journalist Rick Broadbent of The Times already has several sports books under his belt. About boxing, about motorcycle racing, and he worked with heptathlete Jessica Ennis on her autobiography. The story of Emil Zátopek was a step in a different direction for him: he was writing about an athlete he had never met, who lived in a country whose language he doesn’t speak. But that was by no means a handicap.

From the start the author proves that athletics is his world. He didn’t have to read up elsewhere on how the sport works and what distance running involves. He’s on familiar ground and never falters in terminology, historical digressions or context. He tells the story confidently and manages to bring to life the atmosphere of races and events that took place more than sixty years ago. He has a feel for the story and for heading towards the goal, or rather, the home straight. He doesn’t waffle.

Although the book draws on research from Czech and foreign sources, Broadbent doesn’t rely on them alone. He visited and interviewed many of Zátopek’s friends and contemporaries, including Dana Zátopková. He spoke with Australian champion Ron Clarke, for example, shortly before his death last year. In fact, the book begins and ends with the story of the Helsinki gold medal that Zátopek gave to his successor in 1966.

Emil Zátopek

Endurance: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Emil Zátopek isn’t focused only on the Czech runner himself. Broadbent tells the stories of other runners in parallel, above all Gordon Pirie and Jim Peters, to a lesser extent Alain Mimoun and Vladimir Kuts; you’ll also learn a few interesting things about their predecessors and successors. This places Zátopek’s life in a unique context that has never been described at such length. He’s not the only actor on an empty stage.

As a reader you can compare the fates of these champions, from childhood through the war to their sporting careers, and judge the advantages and hardships they faced. In the East, loyal athletes didn’t have to worry about making a living, but they had to resist political pressure, from the government down to any district official. In the West they had more freedom, but the reality was hostile media, financial insecurity and the need for caution in money matters, as they had to avoid the fateful accusation of professionalism, because even a few dozen dollars taken on the side could ruin their careers.

On the “Czechoslovak” level, Zátopek’s path in the book is shadowed by the fate of Jan Haluza, his first and only coach, who became a political prisoner after the communist takeover in February 1948.

Original review in Czech