Paavo Nurmi

Paavo Nurmi
Paavo Nurmi (1920 in Antwerp)
Full name	Paavo Johannes Nurmi
nation	Finland
birthday	June 13, 1897
place of birth	Turku
date of death	2nd October 1973
Place of death	Helsinki
Career
discipline	Middle distance running , long distance running
Best performance	3: 52.6 min ( 1500 m ) 14: 28.2 min ( 5000 m ) 30: 06.1 min ( 10,000 m ) 9: 31.2 min ( 3000 m obstacle )
society	Turun Urheiluliitto
Medal table
Olympic games 9 × 3 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold Antwerp 1920 10,000 m gold Antwerp 1920 Cross running single gold Antwerp 1920 Cross-country team silver Antwerp 1920 5000 m gold Paris 1924 1500 m gold Paris 1924 5000 m gold Paris 1924 Cross running single gold Paris 1924 Cross-country team gold Paris 1924 3000 m team gold Amsterdam 1928 10,000 m silver Amsterdam 1928 5000 m silver Amsterdam 1928 3000 m obstacle

Paavo Johannes Nurmi  [ ˈpɑːvɔ ˈnurmi ] (born June 13, 1897 in Turku , † October 2, 1973 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish athlete . He is considered one of the most important athletes of all. Between 1920 and 1928 he won nine gold medals at the Olympic Games . Paavo Nurmi ran a total of 24 world records from 1,500 meters to the hour run (19,210 m) by 1931 .

Life

Nurmi, who came from a humble background, was born in Turku in 1897 as the second child of smallholder and later carpenter Johan Frederik Nurmi and his wife Matilda Vilhelmina. Even as a child he had to support his family by doing heavy work such as chopping wood or delivering water, as his father had died in 1910 at the age of 49. But his meager wages were probably enough for a pair of real running shoes. When he ran the 1,500 meters in five minutes at the age of just eleven, his talent was recognized. Later he joined the Turun Urheiluliitto (German: Turku Sports Association) , not least due to the success of Hannes Kolehmainen at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, and was trained by Lauri Pihkala . Nurmi was to belong to this club until the end of his life. Nurmi's training was characterized by his style run with a stopwatch in hand. He paid attention to running economy and racing speed. The terrace training according to Pihkala can be seen as a pre-form of interval training .

Nurmi made his big breakthrough at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp : He won gold over the 10,000 meters , the cross-country run and the team classification in the cross-country run together with Heikki Liimatainen and Teodor Koskenniemi . Only in the 5000 meter run did he have to admit defeat to Frenchman Joseph Guillemot .

Olympic Games 1924

Because of the schedule of the Olympic running competitions - the runs over 1500 and 5000 meters were scheduled for July 10th - he tested this on June 19, 1924 in Helsinki and broke both world records over these distances within an hour (3: 52.6 min and 14: 28.2 min). The 1924 Olympic Games in Paris were to be the highlight of Nurmi's career. Within 4 days he was able to win 5 gold medals: on July 10th he won within 2 hours first over 1500 meters and then over 5000 meters. On July 12th, the 10.65 km cross-country race, which went down in sporting history as the heat battle of Colombes, took place, where he was the superior individual winner and won the team championship with Ville Ritola and Heikki Liimatainen . The next day, he won the 3,000-meter team run with Ritola and Elias Katz . Nurmi was upset and disappointed that the Finnish officials denied him the chance to repeat his Olympic victory in the 10,000-meter run. Since this competition took place on July 6th and also without preliminary runs, one can only speculate about the motives. The mostly handed down reasoning that one feared an overload of Nurmis can be doubted, since Ville Ritola has contested one more competition. Presumably the association wanted to achieve as many victories as possible; second and third places were not as important as they are today. On August 31, 1924, Nurmi undercut Ritola's time in Kuopio by 17 seconds with the new world record time of 30: 06.2 minutes.

Later career

Nurmi's incredible achievements are also underlined by the fact that he ran 48 medium and long-distance races in a five-month USA tour in 1925, continuously breaking world records indoors and outdoors and remaining unbeaten. Also at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928 , Nurmi, now 31 years old, presented himself again strongly and won the gold medal over 10,000 meters. In the 5000 meter run, he had to put up with the silver medal behind Ville Ritola and in the 3000 meter obstacle course he also came second with an inferior hurdle technique behind his compatriot Toivo Loukola, who was running behind his world record . In general, Paavo Nurmi and Ville Ritola and with them numerous other top Finnish athletes were considered the phalanx in long-distance running in the 1920s and thus created the myth of the “flying Finns”.

Early retirement

In 1931 Nurmi advertised the drug Rejuven, which today would be considered an anabolic steroid forbidden in sports : "I was amazed how Rejuven strengthens the body and can warmly recommend it to athletes with a long, strenuous competition season." In 1932, it was even before the Olympics Los Angeles banned for life for violating amateur status. He was accused of having received too much money for travel expenses to a competition in Germany. Until the end, he hoped for the judgment to be overturned and, with a time of 2:22 h over 40.2 km in Viipuri on June 26, 1932, even traveled with the Finnish team to the USA to finish his career with gold in the To crown marathon run. However, he was not allowed to start.

After the sports career

After this and other personal low points, Nurmi sank into bitterness. He saw himself as a victim of a Swedish plot when a Stockholm newspaper reported badly about him. His marriage to Sylvi Laaksonen in 1932, from which there was a child, Matti Nurmi, who was part of the middle-range Finnish top in the 1950s, was divorced in 1935. It was not until 1952 that he appeared appeased when he was allowed to carry the Olympic flame into the Helsinki stadium , which the IOC officials did not like to see, since Nurmi was after all an athlete banned from the IOC for life.

Ignition of the Olympic flame by Paavo Nurmi, 1952

For a few years he let himself be passed around as a celebrity, but his old age was marked by depression, which made him appreciate his achievements less. Nurmi almost went blind, suffered several heart attacks and was paralyzed on one side. When he died in 1973, Finland's President Urho Kaleva Kekkonen - himself a former athlete - wrote an obituary that ended with the sentence: “He was not a happy person!” This is also confirmed by a quote from him: “My balance sheet is sober and honest: Me have achieved nothing in my life ”. On October 11, 1973, Nurmi received a state funeral. From the Old Church in Helsinki he was transported by motorcade to the Old Cemetery in Turku and buried in a family grave.

Honors and miscellaneous

The family grave of the Nurmi family

• In honor of Nurmi's sporting achievements, the asteroid (1740) Paavo Nurmi is named after him.
• For his 60th birthday, his association Turun Urheiluliitto organized the Paavo Nurmi Games as a gift .
• In 1987 the Bank of Finland issued a 10 Finnish Mark note with Nurmi's portrait on the front and the stylized Olympic Stadium on the back . As far as is known, the "Flying Finn" is the only Olympian to be honored in this way.
• His native Turku has named a multi-purpose stadium after him on his 100th birthday, the Paavo Nurmi Stadium .
• His name and the associated association with speed found its way into linguistic usage in the Austrian idiom “I am jo ned da Nurmi” (I'm not the Nurmi) as an excuse for a more leisurely pace in leisure sports and work.
• A primary school is named after him in the Berlin district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf .
• A Paavo Nurmi Marathon has been held in Iron County in the US state of Wisconsin since 1969 . Since 1992, a marathon named after him has also been held in his native Turku.
• In 2012 Nurmi was inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame .

Olympic medals

Plaque on the statue in front of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium

• 1920 gold 10,000 m
• 1920 gold cross-country race individual evaluation
• 1920 gold cross-country team competition with Heikki Liimatainen and Teodor Koskenniemi
• 1920 silver 5000 m (gold to Joseph Guillemot )
• 1924 gold 1500 m
• 1924 gold 5000 m
• 1924 Gold cross-country race individual evaluation
• 1924 Gold cross-country team competition with Ville Ritola and Heikki Liimatainen
• 1924 Gold 3000 m team classification with Ville Ritola and Elias Katz
• 1928 gold 10,000 m
• 1928 silver 5000 m (gold to Ville Ritola)
• 1928 Silver 3000 m obstacle (gold to Toivo Loukola )

Note: In each team competition there were six Finnish runners at the start, only those who were included in the ranking are listed.

See also

• List of the most successful summer Olympians

Web links

Commons : Paavo Nurmi  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Paavo Nurmi in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• The Finnish running legend - Paavo Nurmi Excerpt from a biography on runnersworld.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Winner of 12 Olympic Medals: Paavo Nurmi on davidstuff.com, accessed September 24, 2013
2. ↑ ^{a b} www.runnersworld.de: The Finnish running legend - Paavo Nurmi , accessed on October 1, 2010
3. ↑ ^{a b} Harald Krämer, Klaus Zobel, Werner Irro (eds.): Marathon - A running book in 42,195 chapters . Verlag Die Werkstatt, 2004, ISBN 3-89533-464-2 , p. 61 ff.
4. ↑ Arnd Krüger : Many roads lead to Olympia. The changes in training systems for medium and long distance runners (1850–1997). In: N. Gissel (Hrsg.): Sporting performance in change. Czwalina, Hamburg 1998, pp. 41-56.
5. ^ John A. Lucas: In the Eye of the Storm: Paavo Nurmi and the American Athletic Amateur-Professional Struggle (1925 and 1929). In: Stadion, 18 (1992), 2, pp. 225-246.
6. ^ Doping history 1904–1931: Chemical support for Hicks and Nurmi sportschau.de August 17, 2015
7. ↑ arrs.run: Marathon world best list 1932
8. ↑ Christian Kleber: Run like a Nurmi. In: maxfunsports.com , January 1, 2016.
9. ↑ Winner of 12 Olympic Medals: Paavo Nurmi on davidstuff.com, accessed September 24, 2013
10. ^ A track & field classic in Turku on paavonurmisports.fi, accessed September 24, 2013
11. ↑ Winner of 12 Olympic Medals: Paavo Nurmi on davidstuff.com, accessed September 24, 2013
12. ↑ Turku: Paavo Nurmi Stadium ( memento of September 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on turku.fi, accessed September 24, 2013
13. ↑ Ostarrichi - Austrian Dictionary Don't be the Nurmi - don't let yourself be rushed
14. ^ Homepage of the Paavo Nurmi primary school
15. ↑ hurleywi.com: Information about the Paavo Nurmi Marathon in Iron County, Wisconsin ( Memento from December 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
16. ↑ www.paavonurmimarathon.com: Website of the Paavo Nurmi Marathon in Iron County, Wisconsin (English)
17. ↑ www.paavonurmisports.fi: Website of the Paavo Nurmi Marathon in Turku (Finnish, English)