Zátopek was known as the ‘Czech Locomotive’ because of his conspicuous wheezing and groaning.

Michael Shermer reviews Today We Die a Little! The Inimitable Emil Zátopek, the Greatest Olympic Runner of All Time by Richard Askwith, and Endurance: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Emil Zátopek by Rick Broadbent. These ran in the Wall Street Journal under the title “The Greatest Runner of All Time” on June 3, 2016.

In the annals of running, almost everyone knows the significance of 1954, for that is the year the great British miler Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile and became a symbol for conquering psychological barriers to human achievement. Few people know that, in the same year, a Czechoslovakian long-distance runner named Emil Zátopek became the first to break the 30-minute barrier for 10,000 meters, an arguably tougher accomplishment given how much longer the agony must be endured.

The 1954 record was one of many marks to fall to Zátopek. At 6 feet, 159 pounds, this scrappy and sinewy athlete was known as the “Czech Locomotive” because of his noticeably audible wheezing and groaning and the contorted facial expressions that accompanied his efforts. “It isn’t gymnastics or figure skating, you know,” he once growled. Contrasting himself to milers, he opined: “If you want to run, run a mile; if you want to experience a different life, run a marathon.”

Zátopek’s deeds at the 1948 Olympic Games in London netted him gold in the 10,000 meters and silver in the 5,000 meters. Four years later, at the Helsinki Games, he took gold in the 5,000 meters, the 10,000 meters and, stunningly, the marathon—his first, which he entered on something of a whim. All three runs were Olympic records, and the trifecta has never been matched (and probably never will be). Zátopek went on to set world records for 20,000 meters, 25,000 meters, 30,000 meters, 6 miles, 10 miles and 15 miles. He held the men’s one-hour world record for years and was the first to break the 20,000-meter mark in that time.

For these accomplishments on the track—all told, he won five Olympic medals and set 18 world records—and many more off the field in training (he was the founder of the modern interval training method), Zátopek was one of the first 12 athletes inducted into the International Association of Athletics Federations Hall of Fame in 2012. In 2013, Runner’s World magazine christened him “the greatest runner of all time.” When you reflect on whom he beat out—Jesse Owens, Steve Prefontaine, Alberto Salazar, Sebastian Coe, Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, Usain Bolt—it is surprising that so few people outside the sport know him.

Zátopek competed in the era just before television turned athletes into celebrities. Yet it would hardly be surprising if movie treatments—either dramatic or documentary—were to appear in the wake of two thoughtfully written biographies. Fleshing out the full life of this remarkable man are British journalists Richard Askwith, in his aptly titled “Today We Die a Little!,” and Rick Broadbent in “Endurance.” Both do their subject justice through extensive archival research and personal interviews with people who knew Zátopek, including his wife and fellow Olympian Dana Zátopková.

Mr. Askwith quotes a 1964 description of what he calls Zátopek’s “special spirit”: He was, his sources write, “not mad … just utterly absorbed, with every fibre of his explosive body, in what he is doing, and damn what the rest of the world thinks. It makes him the most refreshing, and the most exhausting, person to be with.” Mr. Broadbent puts Zátopek’s accomplishments into perspective by noting that sprinters can be beaten by a dog or squirrel (lions are twice as fast), but over long distances humans can outrun all mammals, even horses, meaning that “endurance runners are true masters of the universe” and that “Emil Zátopek is probably the greatest of these masters.”

Both biographers take readers through their subject’s mercurial life in Czechoslovakia, where he was born into poverty in 1922 and landed his first job at the Bata athletic-shoe factory at age 14, leading to his first race at age 18. He finished second, Mr. Broadbent narrates, “with an ugly rolling gait and flailing arms, tongue lolling, face contorted.” Yet it was clear that Zátopek had talent, and the longer the race, the better he did.

Though married to a women every bit his athletic equal (Dana won two Olympic medals in the javelin), Zátopek was very much a man of his time. When she noticed that her event was scheduled during one of his, she lovingly told him, “I can’t concentrate if you are racing,” to which he replied: “That’s right. A wife must think of her husband, after all.” He later apologized, but the point is that we must be careful not to judge people of another era by our own values.

This is especially true when the era is Cold War Czechoslovakia. Zátopek’s athletic accomplishments unfolded during much political turmoil. Even prominent athletes had to dissemble, equivocate and maneuver around the political minefield of the 1950s. Sometimes Zátopek stood up to the regime in defense of fellow athletes under suspicion, sometimes he didn’t.

This selective reticence was not unreasonable in light of what happened to him after the Prague Spring of 1968, when he did publicly back the party’s more democratic wing. After the movement was crushed by Soviet tanks, party hardliners accused Zátopek of possessing an anti-Soviet attitude, stripped him of his army rank, and shipped him off to work as a trash collector, well digger and uranium miner. Later it came to light that the State Security police (the StB) had files on both Zátopek and his wife, tracking their movements, especially during overseas meets. Despite being a lifelong Communist (“he just wanted a Communism that would work” says Mr. Broadbent), he became persona non grata. Rumors that Zátopek was an StB informant have never been verified, says Mr. Askwith, although disturbingly it appears that one in four Czechs were.

It wasn’t until 1990, when democracy triumphed under Václav Havel during the Velvet Revolution, that Emil Zátopek was able to put his broken life back together. But he had no further political role to play. Zátopek, says Mr. Broadbent, “was not a political animal. He had a basic sense of right and wrong and lived by that. Sometimes, in such an aggressively black and white world, that made him malleable.” And as Mr. Askwith notes, “Defiance looks good on paper. In real life, it comes at a price that many cannot bring themselves to pay.” As Dana herself once said: “What good is it if someone says five or ten years after you are dead that you are a hero? Maybe don’t be such a big hero. Maybe be alive, instead.” Fortunately Zátopek lived long enough to receive his country’s highest honor—the Order of the White Lion—and in 2000, at age 78, he died a national hero.

Today, at the Stadium of Youth in Zlin, a life-size bronze statue of Zátopek inspires young athletes, and the grainy videos you can watch online help his inimitable grit live on for future generations, meaning that he will never again be the greatest runner you’ve never heard of.