State funeral for Zatopek

Zatopek was renowned for his front-running style

Czech authorites are to give a funeral with state honours for four-time Olympic gold medallist Emil Zatopek, who died last week at the age of 78.

Czech Olympic Committee Secretary Karol Spacek said that the date for the ceremony has been set for 6 December at the Prague National Theatre and will be attended by leading state representatives.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Juan Antonio Samaranch and International Amateur Athletic Association (IAAF) president Lamine Diack will also attend the ceremony for the greatest Czech athlete of all time.

During the ceremony the coffin will be draped in the country's national flag and the Czech national anthem will be played.

Private cremation

The official ceremony will be followed by a private cremation in Prague.

Zatopek's wife Dana Zatopkova, who won gold in the javelin at the 1952 Olympics, wants the urn to be buried in a strictly family ceremony, which will take place early next year at Roznov-pad-Radhostem in his home region of northern Moravia.

Zatopek won the 10,000m gold at the London Olympics in 1948 and at Helsinki in 1952, where he added the 5,000m and the marathon titles.

A hero in his homeland, he fell from official grace after the Prague Spring where he took the microphone in Wenceslas square to speak out against the presence of Soviet tanks.

Zatopek won three golds in the 1952 Games

Pro-Soviet military officials dismissed him from the Czech army and he was forced into manual jobs at the age of 45.

"I ended up working 600 metres under ground in a uranium mine at Jachymov 130km west of Prague with a miner's helmet on my head," he recalled later.

It was not until 1974, six years after the Soviet invasion, that he was transferred to an administrative post.