Brussels, Jan 15 (CTK correspondent) – A Belgian sport magazine bearing the name of legendary Czech long-distance runner and four-time Olympic winner Emil Zatopek will celebrate its tenth anniversary by a running race at the Trois Tilleuls stadium in Brussels on Tuesday, its director has told CTK.
Jean-Paul Brouwier, director of Zatopek magazine, said he still considered the letter in which former athlete Dana Zatopkova, 94, gave consent to publishing a magazine on running named after her late husband Emil Zatopek (1922-2000) a small miracle.
The Tuesday race will be held in memory of Zatopek.
The magazine’ editorial board, along with the Czech Embassy in Belgium, the local Czech Centre and the Czech Olympic Committee, decided to repeat the run in which Zatopek established a world record in 10-kilometre track at the same stadium in June 1954. He was the first to cover the track in 28 minutes, 54 seconds.
A relay team of volunteers will try to repeat his performance. They will have to cover one round at the stadium in 69.36 seconds on average each.
Their pace will be given by a cyclist, one of the then participants in the race. The first runner in the relay race will be former Czech athlete Sarka Kasparkova, 45, an Olympic medalist in triple jump.
“Whenever a Czech passes by a news stand and can see a Belgian magazine named Zatopek, his heart of a patriot is pleased,” Czech Ambassador to Belgium Jaroslav Kurfurst told CTK.
Zatopek is perceived both as a legend and a symbol in the country, he said.
“I think it is also important that he remained an open and a square guy in the hard times of communism who won affection in the world and for whom it was easy to make friends. He had many in Belgium as well,” Kurfurst added.
Brouwier told CTK that the editorial board had chosen Zatopek’s name for three reasons ten years ago.
First, he was the best long-distance runner in the world. Second, he was much more than just an athlete, he was fighting for freedom, for instance during the 1968 Prague Spring reform movement, and third, he was a very open person who could speak many languages, Brouwier said.
The Zatopek quarterly is currently issued in 20,000 copies for France and 10,000 for Belgium. It is also available in Switzerland and Canada. Its original version is in French, but its website is in Dutch as well.
