Emil Zátopek: Morris Mindset

"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem."

"Essentially, we distinguish ourselves from the rest. If you want to win something, run the 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon."

"I was not talented enough to run and smile at the same time."

"It's at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys."

Upon winning: "But it was the finest exhaustion I've ever felt."

"Why should I practice running slow? I already know how to run slow.
I want to learn to run fast."

"A runner must run with dreams in his heart, not money in his pocket."

"To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity.
And if I can beat it that means there is nothing special about it."

"What has passed is already finished with.
What I find more interesting is what is still to come."

"We forget our bodies to the benefit of mechanical leisure. We act continuously with our brain, but we no longer use our bodies, our limbs. It is the Africans who possess this vitality, this muscular youth, this thirst for physical action which we are lacking. We have a magnificent motor at our disposal, but we no longer know how to use it."

"There is a great advantage in training under unfavorable conditions. It is better to train under bad conditions, for the difference is then a tremendous relief in a race."

"You can't climb up to the second floor without a ladder....When you set your aim too high and don't fulfill it, then your enthusiasm turns to bitterness.
Try for a goal that's reasonable, and then gradually raise it."

"If you come to think of it, you never see deer, dogs and
rabbits worrying about their menus and yet they run much faster than humans."
Emil Zatopek

"After all those dark days of the war, the bombing, the killing, the starvation, the revival of the Olympics was as if the sun had come out....I went into the Olympic Village and suddenly there were no more frontiers, no more barriers. Just the people meeting together. It was wonderfully warm. Men and women who had just lost five years of life were back again."
Zatopek about the 1948 London Olympics.

When asked about his tortured expression during races,
Emil Zatopek said, "It is not gymnastics or ice skating you know."

"There are three things worth living for:
American luxury, Japanese women and Chinese food,"
Emil Zatopek said, joking.

"When I was young, I was too slow. I thought I must learn to run fast by practicing to run fast, so I ran 100 meters fast 20 times. Then I came back, slow,slow,slow. People said, 'Emil, you are crazy. You are training like a sprinter.'"

Emil Zatopek on Interval Training, "Everyone said, 'Emil, you are a fool!'
But when I first won the European Championship, they said: 'Emil, you are a genius!'"

"He does everything wrong but win."
Larry Snyder, Ohio State track coach, about Emil Zatopek's contorted style of running.

"Great is the victory, but the friendship is all the greater."