Martti Vainio

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Martti Sakari Vainio (born December 30, 1950 in Vehkalahti , Kymenlaakso ) is a former Finnish long-distance runner who became European champion in the 10,000 meter run in 1978 .

Career

At the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal , three Finnish runners competed on the 10,000-meter course. While Vainio and Pekka Päivärinta could not qualify for the final, Lasse Virén repeated his Olympic victories of 1972 in both the 5000 meter run and over 10,000 meters. In 1977 Vainio won the first of his nine Finnish championship titles.

On August 29, 1978, the 10,000 meter final of the European Championships took place in Prague . The favorite was the British European record holder Brendan Foster , whose record stood at 27: 30.3 minutes. In the fastest European championship run to date (as of 2007), Vainio improved by 28 seconds to 27: 30.99 minutes. The Italian Venanzio Ortis and Aleksandras Antipovas from the Soviet Union crossed the finish line just behind him , while Foster was only fourth. In the 5000 meter final on September 2nd, the pace was rather moderate. In the final sprint, Ortis won ahead of the Swiss record holder Markus Ryffel , in 13: 29.7 minutes Vainio reached the finish in sixth place, 1.2 seconds behind.

At the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow , Vainio reached the final on both distances, but only finished 13th over 10,000 meters and came eleventh over 5000 meters, while his compatriot Kaarlo Maaninka won silver and bronze.

The final over 10,000 meters at the European Championships in Athens in 1982 saw a group of four in front from the middle of the race: the Portuguese Carlos Lopes set the pace . In addition to Vainio, Werner Schildhauer from the GDR and the Italian Alberto Cova also ran in wait. With 200 meters to go, Vainio started a long sprint, but was overtaken first by Schildhauer and then by Cova on the home straight. Cova only took the lead just before the finish line, and one and a half seconds back Vainio was third in 27: 42.51 minutes. Five days later in the 5000 meter final, Vainio was powerless in the sprint and finished eighth in 13: 33.69 minutes.

At the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki , Vainio reached the finals in front of a home crowd on both long distances, each as the only Finn. In the 10,000 meter final, five runners broke away from the rest of the leading group with 400 meters to go. Werner Schildhauer and Hansjörg Kunze from the GDR tried to solve together with Vainio von Cova and the Tanzanian Gidamis Shahanga , which did not succeed. Immediately before the finish, Cova sprinted over the two runners from the GDR, Vainio was fourth in 28: 01.37 minutes, 33 hundredths of a second behind Cova. The 5000 meter final took place five days later. After a slow race, Dmitri Dmitrijew from the Soviet Union took the lead in the sprint , but was overrun by Irishman Eamonn Coghlan on the home straight . Schildhauer won silver once more, and Vainio secured the bronze medal ahead of Dmitrijew with a dive to the finish.

In 1983 Vainio was eighth in the Philadelphia Half Marathon and in 1984 third in the Rotterdam Marathon . Because of the Olympic boycott of the Eastern Bloc, Schildhauer and Kunze were not at the start of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles . In the 10,000 meter final, Vainio broke away from the rest of the field early on at a consistently high pace. Only Cova could easily follow the pace and ran in the slipstream of the long Finn. At the beginning of the home straight, Cova started his sprint, easily passed Vainio and at the finish line was three and a half seconds ahead of Vainio. After Vainio positive for anabolic steroids was tested, he was the silver medal revoked . First he was given a life ban, but was pardoned after 18 months. In his biography in 2004 he admitted that he had already doped at the 1983 World Championships.

At the European Championships in 1986 in Stuttgart , he was seventh over 10,000 meters and sixth over 5000 meters. In Rome at the World Championships in Rome in 1987 , he gave up in the final over 10,000 meters.

Martti Vainio is 1.90 m tall and weighed 74 kg during his playing days.

Finnish championship title

  • 3000 m (hall): 1982, 1984
  • 5000 m: 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1987
  • 10,000 m: 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1987, 1988
  • Cross-country run : 1981, 1983, 1986, 1987

Best times

  • 3000 m: 7: 44.42 min, July 12, 1984, Varkaus
    • Hall: 7: 55.84 min, February 11, 1984, Turku
  • 5000 m: 13: 20.07 min, August 24, 1983, Zurich
  • 10,000 m: 27: 30.99 min, August 29, 1978, Prague (Finnish national record; as of December 31, 2006)
  • Half marathon : 1:04:06 h, September 18, 1983, Philadelphia
  • Marathon : 2:13:05 h, April 14, 1984, Rotterdam

literature

  • Klaus Amrhein & Axel Schäfer: 60 years of the European Athletics Championships. Groß-Zimmer / Bochum 1998
  • Ekkehard zur Megede: The Modern Olympic Century 1896-1996 Track and Field Athletics. Berlin 1999 (published by the German Society for Athletics Documentation e.V.)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volker Kluge : Summer Olympic Games - Chronicle III: Mexico City 1968 - Los Angeles 1984 . Sportverlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-328-00741-5 , p. 1061 .
  2. ^ Doping history 1972 - 1984: Anabolic steroids consumption until death sportschau.de August 17, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Vainio, Martti
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vainio, Martti Sakari (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Finnish long distance runner
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Vehkalahti