Tributes yesterday poured in for the legendary Czech long-distance runner Emil Zatopek, who died aged 78 on Tuesday evening at a Prague military hospital after suffering a stroke last month.

Zatopek died following a long illness, although two months ago he had briefly returned home following an improvement in his condition. The Czech Republic's most celebrated athlete was first hospitalised on September 4th with a mystery virus that was complicated by pneumonia and a weakened heart rate.

Zatopek, known as the Locomotive, earned a place in Olympic history at the 1952 Helsinki Games when he won the 5,000 metres, 10,000m and the marathon in the space of eight days, each in Olympic record time, making him the only athlete to sweep all three events. He also won the gold medal in the 10,000m and the silver in the 5,000m at the 1948 Olympics in London.

In all, he set 18 world records from 5,000m to 25km. In 1954 he lowered his own 10,000m mark one day after he had run a world record for the 5,000m.

A hero in his homeland, Zatopek fell from grace with the establishment after the Prague Spring where he took the microphone at Wenceslas Square to speak out against the presence of Soviet tanks. Pro-Soviet military officials threw him out of 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 as a documentalist.

Long-time French rival and friend Alain Mimoun said Zatopek's death deeply saddened him: "I am losing a brother, not an adversary. It was fate which brought me together with such a gentleman. Our friendship was born at Algiers in 1946. On the track we had a 10-year battle, a battle of titans.

The president of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, Lamine Diack, called Zatopek a "champion of the people" and added: "This is a sad day not only for sports people, who saw embodied in Zatopek all the virtues of a champion, but also for the common people who recognised in Zatopek an honest and intransigent defender of the fundamental principles of dignity and freedom of the individual.

"Emil Zatopek knew the greatest triumphs and the greatest suffering and that is what will keep him as an eternal symbol of athletics.

"Emil Zatopek was one of my youthful heroes and still today his story stands as an example for all those who start a career in sport, particularly in athletics.

"He showed how seriousness and self-discipline, a passion for everything one does, a sense of duty and the will to overcome the limits of pain are the fundamental arms of the athlete," added Diack.

Finland's four-time Olympic champion Lasse Viren said: "It's a sad thing. He was such a friend of Finland because of his memories in Helsinki." He said he tried to emulate Zatopek's feat in Helsinki at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. "It was a challenge for me to try to run all three distances," he said.

The Czech president Vaclav Havel said: "His results made our country famous."