A Bridge To Long Ago

The search and discovery seem so easy now. Hand the address to the cab driver. Travel to the north side of Prague . Stop at the house on the hill, on Nad Kazankou Street. Walk to the iron front gate. Ring the bell. Wait for the 67-year-old man with the slight limp to answer. Follow him up a stone path.

Where has Emil Zatopek been?

Here.

"Would you like a beer?" he asks. 'I think we have some beer. I used to drink a lot of it, but I don't drink any now. Not good for my heart. Beer would get my pulse racing. I could feel it. Beer is a young man's drink."

The gold medals are kept in a dresser on the second floor. Want to see them? The only one that is missing was given by Zatopek to Ron Clarke , the Australian runner who always finished second. Remember him? A plate of pastries and a plate of cookies have been placed on the living room table. A cousin is asleep in the kitchen, snoring in syncopation with the sound of a cuckoo clock. A radio plays.

What has been the problem?

"How about some orange juice?" Zatopek says. "That's what I think I'll have. Orange juice."

For most of the past 22 years, he has not been available. How could that be? Not available? That was always the official response. Ask how he was, and the Czechoslovakian government would say he was "fine." Ask to see him and he was "not available." Probably the greatest distance runner of all time. A legend. A bona fide, certified legend. Not available.

The stories became virtual folk tales. Where was he? The man who won the 5,000, the 10,000 and the marathon at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki was, it was said, a street sweeper. He was a garbageman. He was a digger of ditches, traveling around the country in a trailer. What was true? What was false?

He was allowed after a long while to travel to this or that international track event, but even then he mostly was a face and a smile. Where were the words?