Unless you have been living under a large rock, or too busy running around the world, you cannot have missed the fact that the weekend has started early with two Bank Holidays as Her Majesty the Queen becomes the first British monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee after 70 years of service.

HM Queen Elizabeth II succeeded to the Throne on 6 February 1952 after the death of her father, King George VI. She was in Kenya at the time and thus became the first Sovereign in over 200 years to accede while abroad. 

The astonishingly long reign of our Queen got our reporter Alan Newman thinking back to what was happening in sport, particularly athletics, 70 years ago in 1952 – the year of the Helsinki Olympic Games and the surely never to be repeated triple gold medal success of Czech soldier Emil Zatopek.

Zatopek was a reluctant runner. Aged 16, while working in the Bata shoe factory in Zlin, he was ordered by the factory sports coach to run a race but he tried to avoid the ordeal by claiming he was too weak. Fortunately for his legion of fans at home and abroad, the coach sent Zatopek for a physical check-up and the doctor passed him fit to run!

Coaching methods may have changed a bit since then but the good news is Zatopek finished second out of 100 runners in that first race and went on to break the 10,000m world record five times and set a total of 18 world records at 5000m; 10 miles; 20,000m; 15 miles; 25,000m; 30,000m and the one hour run (best of 20,052m – just short of a half marathon). The current world record for the latter event is held by Sir Mo Farah with 21,330m in 2020.

At the 1952 Helsinki Games, Zatopek made an outrageous tilt at a triple gold. He started with the track 10,000m (29:17) on 20 July. Two days later came the 5000m heat (14:26) and on 24 July he won the 5000m gold in 14:06.6. Not satisfied with two golds, he made a last-minute decision to tackle the marathon on 27 July and, after famously psyching out Britain's Jim Peters regarding the pace in his debut marathon, he claimed a surely never to be matched third gold in an endurance event in the same Olympic Games in 2:23:04 – all in the space of eight days!

Zatopek fun fact...his wife, Dana is also an Olympic champion. She won her gold in javelin at Helsinki in 1952 and they were both born on Sept. 19, 1922. "Emil is four hours older than me," she once said with a smile. 

In other 1952 sports news, Manchester United won the First Division title and Newcastle United beat Arsenal 1-0 in the FA Cup; Surrey won the County Cricket Championships; Teal won the Grand National; Wales won the Five Nations Rugby Union series with a Grand Slam; Alberto Ascari (Italy) was the Formula One world champion and the Wimbledon tennis champions were Frank Sedgman (Australia) and USA's Maureen Connolly (Little Mo).      

Emil Zatopek pictured leading 1952 Helsinki Olympic 5000m final via Wikimedia Commons