Dana et emil zatopek biography

Winning one Olympic gold medal is a life-changing event, the culmination of a lifetime’s sacrifice and suffering distilled into one race, one throw, one jump, one moment of cosmic perfection.

The talent, will and self-denial necessary to be the best of the best on the greatest stage is a feeling few athletes are privileged to experience. They are elite, extraordinary examples of human endeavour.

Imagine, then, what it must be like to win two Olympic golds.

Or three – perhaps, even, at the same Games.

Dana et emil zatopek biography wikipedia

And what about if your significant other also won gold? That would be impossible, right?

At the 1952 Olympics, Emil Zatopek and Dana Zatopkova achieved the impossible. Four years earlier in London, Emil had won the 10,000m and proposed to his future wife, but in Helsinki he became the only person to win an unprecedented long-distance hat-trick: the 5,000m, 10,000m and mar