Reima Virtanen
| Reima Virtanen medal table |
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|---|---|---|
 Finland
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| Olympic Summer Games | ||
| silver | 1972 Munich | medium weight |
| European Championship | ||
| bronze | 1969 Bucharest | medium weight |
| bronze | 1971 Madrid | medium weight |
Reima Valdemar Virtanen (born November 5, 1947 in Kemi , Lapland ) is a former Finnish middleweight amateur boxer.
Reima Virtanen started boxing in 1959 and became Finnish Middleweight Champion in 1969, 1971 and 1972. During these three years he was also voted Finland's Boxer of the Year. In 1969 he was voted the best athlete in Lapland. In 1970 and 1972, he also won the Nordic Championships.
In 1969 he started at the 18th European Championships in Bucharest and won the bronze medal in the middleweight division. He also defeated British champion Dave Wallington in the quarterfinals. In the semifinals he was finally defeated by the Yugoslavian champion Mate Parlov (Olympic champion 1972, world champion 1974) on points.
At the 19th European Championship held in Madrid in 1971 , he again won the bronze medal in the middleweight division. He defeated the multiple German champions Ewald Jarmer and the Scots Daniel McCafferty in the preliminary rounds, as well as the future professional European champion Rudy Koopmans from the Netherlands in the quarter-finals . In the semifinals, he was defeated this time by the Romanian Alec Năstac (Vice World Champion 1974, 3rd place Olympia 1976).
Virtanen celebrated his greatest success at the 20th Summer Olympics in 1972 in Munich . He started in the middleweight division and won the preliminary round fight with a 3-2 point win against Titus Simba from Tanzania, as well as the quarter-finals by knockout in the third round against Witold Stachurski from Poland . In the semifinals he defeated Prince Amartey from Ghana 3-2, before losing to the Russian Vyacheslav Lemeschew in the final and thus won the silver medal. He became the only Finnish medalist in this weight class in Olympic history and, after Sten Suvio (welterweight gold in 1936) and Pentti Hämäläinen (bantamweight gold in 1952), the third most successful Olympic boxer in Finnish history.
He then resigned from boxing at the age of 25. He played about 200 fights in his career, around 30 of them at international tournaments.
Web links
- Reima Virtanen in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
- Reima Virtanen, tul-lappi (Finnish) ( Memento from February 13, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- Finnish champion in amateur boxing (1949-1973), boxing-strefa
- Results of the 18th European Championship in 1969, boxing-strefa
- Results of the 19th European Championship 1971, boxing-strefa
- Boxing results of the 20th 1972 Summer Olympics, boxing-strefa
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Virtanen, Reima |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Virtanen, Reima Valdemar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Finnish boxer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 5, 1947 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kemi , Lapland, Finland |