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The Czech Emil Zatopeck is the only human being to win
the 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon in the same Olympics. This
achievement was in the Helsinki 1952 Olympic Games, Finland, the
land of great long distance runners like Paavo Nurmi.
Before
Helsinki, Zatopeck had already competed in London-1948, when he
won the gold medal in the 10,000m and silver in the 5,000m. But
it was in Helsinki-1952, when he was 30 years old, that Zatopek
achieved one of the greatest achievement of the athletics. His
great feat started on Sunday, with a comfortable win in the
10,000m with the new Olympic record of 29:17.0.
Two days later he took part in the 5,000m qualifying round and
on Thursday he won the gold medal in this distance with the time
of 14:06.6. Three days later he made his marathon debut. Since he
was a "novice", Zatopeck decided to follow the
"specialists" and ended up winning the race with the
new Olympic record of 2:23:04.
In
the spite of his clumsy style, Zatopek broke 20 world records in
distances from the 5,000m to the 30,000m. In 1951 he became the
first man to run 20 km in one hour (20,052m).
Zatopek
also took part in the
Melbourne-1956 Olympic marathon,
just 45 days after a hernia surgery. Although the doctor
recommendation was to take 2 months without running, Zatopeck
finished the marathon in the 6th place.
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History of Athletics
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