Richard Askwith > Quotes

“If you want to enjoy something,’ he said later, ‘run 100 metres.235 If you want to experience something, run a marathon.’ These are the words of a man who knows what it really costs to keep going for 26.2 miles.”
― Richard Askwith, Today We Die a Little: Emil Zátopek, Olympic Legend to Cold War Hero

“It was hard-hitting stuff, denouncing ‘foreign despotism’ and warning of ‘a new dark age’ in which ‘insincerity will become a virtue, lies will become truth and silence will become an existential necessity’. Emil”
― Richard Askwith, Today We Die a Little!: The Inimitable Emil Zátopek, the Greatest Olympic Runner of All Time

“But most fell-runners I know feel – and dislike – the sport’s pains. Those who persist see them as the price that must be paid for the compensatory pleasures. These include the scenery (doesn’t apply on days with zero visibility), the conversation (doesn’t apply on days when you can’t keep up), the joy of being outdoors in the wilderness (doesn’t apply in foul weather), the joy of making full use of your physical powers (doesn’t apply when you’re having an off-day), and the joy – which applies all the more when the other pleasures don’t – of it all being over, and of being able to share your relief with like-minded people.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

“Above all, if you’re not going to enjoy it, don’t bother. It’s an awful long way, and an awful long time to be miserable.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

“It can't be more than a quarter of a mile to the finish, but it seems to go on forever. Do I really have to do this? My legs are entirely dead. Would it really matter if I stopped here?
But I know I'd regret it if I did, so I plod leadenly on, distracting myself...with the thought that, whatever troubles I may have been carrying around in my head before the race, I have now entirely forgotten what they were. This thought is rather refreshing. Whatever physical pains it has involved, this ordeal has utterly absorbed me, forcing my brain to focus on the kind of concerns for which it evolved - navigation, survival, balance, digging deep - rather than on the fretful urban anxieties to which it has become habituated. Reconnecting with your inner animal, I suppose you could call it; and it feels good. Especially when, blissfully, I catch sight of the finish.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

“And he achieved all this with a grace and generosity of spirit that transcended sport.”
― Richard Askwith, Today We Die a Little: Emil Zátopek, Olympic Legend to Cold War Hero

“There are other risks in life apart from the various hazards one encounters in the mountains-and that one of those risks is the loss of ones dreams.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession & Running Free: A Runner’s Journey Back to Nature By Richard Askwith 2 Books Collection Set

“There are so many people today who complain about absolutely everything,' Martina Ruzickova-Jelinkova told me once. 'Yet this woman, who had so much to complain about, never did. I find it very moving.' So, suddenly, do I. Lata was extraordinary not just in what she achieved but in how she lived. She gave what she had to give dreamed and chased improbable dreams, suffered what she had to suffer, and did what she believed was her duty. Each time she encountered a setback, she picked herself up and resumed her journey. She never complained; just quiet endured what was asked of her, as a solider does; or -- in another biblical phrase that must have been to familiar to her -- as a good and faithful servant does.”
― Richard Askwith, Unbreakable

“Важно е какво правиш, когато стадионът е пълен с хора. Но е хиляди пъти по-важно какво правиш, когато на стадиона няма никого”
― Richard Askwith, Today We Die a Little!: The Inimitable Emil Zátopek, the Greatest Olympic Runner of All Time

“One mystery remains: if the horse is so noble, why is it so biddable? Why does it submit to the constant diversion of its gifts to serve human ends? Is it stupid? Is it servile? Some would say so. Yet the same evidence can be interpreted in the opposite way: perhaps the horse submits because this capacity for patient, loyal, uncomplaining service is another facet of its nobility -- perhaps even its essence.
Lata understood that. She understood the paradox of what used to be called horsemanship: the fact that the horse must choose to do as it is asked.”
― Richard Askwith, Unbreakable

“Emil believed that beer was not only noble – the drink of the old Moravians – but positively beneficial for running. ‘This gives me power,’ he once said to Jaromír Konůpka, quaffing from the bottle on the day of a race.”
― Richard Askwith, Today We Die a Little: Emil Zátopek, Olympic Legend to Cold War Hero

“Thriving in later life depends on the choices we make now.”
― Richard Askwith, The Race Against Time: The perfect running gift for runners over 40

“Lata Brandisova was indeed, as Kocman said, 'A noble lady of rare spirit.' But the nobility that defined her was not that of a countess. What would be the point of telling her story, if that were all? She was noble in a rarer, more precious way. Hers was the same brave, loyal spirit that animates the great heart of a horse.”
― Richard Askwith, Unbreakable

“There are other risks in life apart from the various hazards one encounters in the mountains - and one of those risks is the loss of one's dreams.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

“My eyes wander again to that faded photograph, mentioned much earlier, of Lata and Norma, head by head, radiant in the glow of their great triumph. It is, I realize, a picture of two friends: equals; perhaps even kindred spirits. Lata's gift for seeing through equine eyes was not simply a means to an end. In some ways, I suspect, it was more basic than that: the worldview of the horse actually overlapped her own.”
― Richard Askwith, Unbreakable

“Does it ever bother him, I wonder, that all that effort – all those thousands of hours of merciless self-punishment – has brought him so little material reward? This is, after all, an age in which Britain counts its sporting millionaires by the score. ‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘Once you get big rewards, you get nastiness. This is a wonderful sport, with good sport in it. If someone fell in a race, you’d check they were all right, though you wouldn’t stop unless you absolutely had to – just as, if I fell, I wouldn’t want someone to lose their race because of me. But once there’s money, there’s trouble.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

“Emil was aiming for 29:15 – just over six seconds faster than his existing record – but in the second half of the race he began to step up the pace. The Finns roared him on. He ran the final lap flat out and finished in a scarcely believable 29:02.6 – nearly twenty seconds faster than his world record from the previous year. Afterwards, he warmed down outside the stadium, then returned to the centre of the track to retrieve his tracksuit. The spectators spotted him, and gave him a standing ovation that still brought tears to his eyes when he recalled it more than forty years later.143”
― Richard Askwith, Today We Die a Little: Emil Zátopek, Olympic Legend to Cold War Hero