Jonni Myyra

Jonni Myyrä, 1920

Joonas "Jonni" Myyrä (born July 13, 1892 in Savitaipale , † January 22, 1955 in San Francisco ) was a Finnish javelin thrower .

At the Stockholm Olympic Games in 1912 , Julius Saaristo was the first to win Olympic gold in a two-armed javelin throw. The Swede Eric Lemming defended his title in the “normal” javelin throw . In this competition Jonni Myyrä made his Olympic debut at the age of 20 and 8th place.

Myyra's career really began in the years to come, during the First World War . Several times he exceeded the valid world record of 62.32 m that Eric Lemming had set in 1912. Only Myyras litter of 66.10 m, which he set up in Stockholm on August 25, 1919, was officially recognized . In 1925 he was supposed to surpass the current world record in an exhibition match, this throw of 68.55 m was not recognized as a world record because of the character of the competition. It would have been Myyra's best.

At the Olympic Games in Antwerp in 1920 Jonni Myyrä started as a high favorite. He won gold with 65.78 m in front of his compatriots Urho Peltonen (silver) and Pekka Johansson (bronze). A Finn also landed in fourth place with the 1912 Olympic champion Julius Saaristo. In fifth place came the Estonian Aleksander Klumberg-Kolmpere , who had set the world record in the decathlon two months earlier .

Four years later at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924 , Jonni Myyrä was able to repeat his Olympic victory with 62.96 m. As in 1920, he was more than two meters ahead of second, Sweden's Gunnar Lindström , who was supposed to take the world record from Myyrä three months after the games.

The long history of the javelin nation Finland begins with Jonni Myyrä. No other country has so many Olympic champions in this discipline. To this day, Jonni Myyrä is the only Finn who managed to repeat his Olympic victory.

Web links

• Jonni Myyrä in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )