Product Description
Today We Die a Little
Author: Richard Askwith
Format: Paperback
Emil Zátopek, Olympic Legend to Cold War Hero
Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award
Shortlisted for the Cross Sports Book Awards Biography of the Year
The definitive biography of one of the greatest, most extraordinary runners and Olympic heroes of all time, from the author of running classic Feet in the Clouds.
Emil Zátopek won five Olympic medals, set 18 world records, and went undefeated over 10,000 metres for six years. He redefined the boundaries of endurance, training in Army boots, in snow, in sand, in darkness. But his toughness was matched by a spirit of friendship and a joie de vivre that transcended the darkest days of the Cold War.
His triumphs put his country on the map, yet when Soviet tanks moved in to crush Czechoslovakia's new freedoms in 1968, Zátopek paid a heavy personal price for his brave defence of 'socialism with a human face'. Rehabilitated two decades later, he was a shadow of the man he had been - and the world had all but forgotten him.
Today We Die A Little strips away the myths to tell the complex and deeply moving story of the most inspiring Olympic hero of them all.
About the Author
Richard Askwith has been a journalist for over 40 years. He has written six previous books, including his modern classic on fell running, Feet in the Clouds, which won the Best New Writer category at the British Sports Book Awards and was shortlisted for the William Hill and Boardman Tasker prizes, and he is now one of the UK's most celebrated writers on running. Running Free was shortlisted for the Thwaites-Wainwright Prize, and his evocative biography of Emil Zátopek, Today We Die A Little, was shortlisted in the Cross Sports Book Awards. His most recent book, Unbreakable: the Countess, the Nazis and the World's Most Dangerous Horse Race, won Biography of the Year at the Telegraph Sports Book Awards in 2020.
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