Sport: Off the Mark

Emil Zatopek is about as graceless as an athlete can be: he runs something like an upright turtle. Emil is a sawed-off lieutenant from the Czechoslovakian army. In London last week, in the first day of competition at the XIVth Olympiad, he squared off against the Finns for the exhausting 10,000-meter race (a little over six miles).

The Finns thought they had the race to themselves, as they usually have (the great Paavo Nurmi won it twice). For the first few laps last week, it looked as if they were right. Nurmi's protégé, lanky Viljo...