Sari and Matti Murto have taken their daughter through all possible competitions. Mainly both in their own style.
The European Championship week in Munich can be seen on channels from August 11 to 21. You can find live broadcasts, highlights, the competition schedule, interesting news and topics on ‘s competition page.
MUNICH. The Munich Olympic Stadium, completed for the 1972 Olympics, can be considered the cradle of Finnish endurance running. Lasse Virénin, Pekka Vasalan and by Janne Holmén achievements are an essential part of the short curriculum of blue-and-white athletics, as is the importance of previous endurance runners in strengthening Finnish identity.
If the surroundings of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, which hosted the 1936 Games, has a strong echo of homesickness, the theme of the winding streets near the Olympic Stadium in Munich is international. To get to the Olympiakeskus metro station, which is about half a kilometer away, the walker must first cross the bridge. It is named after the Bavarian by Hanns Braun by. Braun won silver in the 400 meters at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, which was his last medal. Braun fell in the First World War.
After the bridge, the traveler does not have to do anything but stay on the safe Kolehmainenweg, familiar to Finns.
At the 1912 Olympics, the Grand Duchy of Finland Hannes from Kolehmainen golden headlines were written. Now they are being written about the recent women’s pole vault European champion Wilma from Murrowhich returned Finnish athletics to the medal base after a six-year hiatus.
It’s local time on Wednesday the 23rd. During the next hours, we plan to watch how Murro’s achievement is celebrated in the darkening night of Munich, but first we have to get to the Finnish team’s hotel.
– It’s okay to join in, says Murro’s manager Tero Heiskawho is on his way to the same destination as his protégé’s parents Matt and Sarin with.
The meeting place happens to be Kolehmainenweg.
A double was available
When Kolehmainen got his namesake street in Munich’s Olympic Park in 1971, Finnish endurance running was in full swing. Juha Väätäinen achieved a double in the long track distances of the European Championships in Helsinki, i.e. won the 10,000 and 5,000 meters. Virén repeated the trick a year later at the Munich Olympics. Only half an hour had passed since Virén’s second gold run, when Vasala ran to Olympic victory in the 1,500 meters. Kind of a double too.
– There was a double on offer again, but not this time, Matti Murto states and refers to the moukari final held at the same time as his daughter’s golden jubilee, where Silja Kosonen was fifth as the best Finn.
What unites Koso and Murto is that they both came into the spotlight of Finnish athletics as teenagers. Both set a junior world record in their sport at the age of 17. Both records still stand. Apart from Murro and Kosonen, only Moukarimis is among the Finns Olli-Pekka in Karjalainen is possessed by the youth ME.
– Silja’s time has yet to come, says Sari Murto.
It took eight years for the Karelian to become an EC gold medalist, Murto got there in six. Patience was enough, but not for everyone. The world’s largest sports equipment manufacturer, Nike, which has supported Murto since 2016, ended the cooperation at the end of last year. It was replaced by the German Puma – and the Bavarian company immediately got its money’s worth. And even at home.
– You’d think that this evening would make them linger, says Heiska.
Different routes to the Games
In domestic athletics circles, the surname Murto is associated with more than pole vaulting. Sari Murto is the chairwoman of the Yleiserluhifanit ry, which has been organizing package trips to prize competitions for domestic sports enthusiasts since 2018.
The spark for the competition trips are memories from my daughter’s junior years. Murrot smelled the American winds in Eugene for the first time already in 2014.
In the Murto family, one thing is constant in prestige races: when there is a race in Europe, Matti’s father arrives at the race venue on his own routes.
Matti Murto has combined his daughter’s trips abroad with his passion for motorcycling from the beginning. Her trip to Munich started with a familiar friend who was attracted to two-wheelers well before her daughter got on the EC machine.
– I set off on Saturday, August 6. First by ship to Tallinn, then through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to Poland. We went there to see the border of Belarus. From there we drove to Slovakia, from where we moved to Austria. That’s where we drove the Grosslockner, says Matti Murto and refers to the scenic route made on the terrain of Austria’s most experienced mountain.
– 3,000 kilometers are on the table for now on this trip. Another couple of thousand will come, but it’s pretty smooth going home from here. Autobahn somewhere in the direction of Berlin, from there probably to Warsaw and from there via the Baltics to home.
– The Yankees had to fly anyway, Sari acknowledges.
– Everything that can be driven, is driven, the husband acknowledges and estimates that he has driven more than 20,000 kilometers of competitive trips so far.
Kolehmainenweg has been completed in less than a quarter of an hour, i.e. in practically the same time as the owner of the road’s name took 110 years ago when he won the 5,000 meters in Stockholm with a race record. Murtok has recently done the same.
You have reached the U-Bahnhof Olympiazentrum, from where the journey continues to Münchener Freiheit station.
The tens of thousands of spectators at the Olympic Stadium have changed to a few individual passengers. However, there are enough people on the phone lines.
– Canopy. 142 messages received, Sari states.
– A quiz question follows. Who has this tweet come from? Great secrecy. Wilma surpasses everyone, writes beep-beep in her tweet, Heiska throws.
– Tuna? Sari makes a guess and refers to the sports reporter of Salon Seudun Sanomiet, awarded as sports reporter of the year Juha Tuuna.
– A little bigger, Heiska acknowledges.
A touching reunion
The newly arrived European Championship is a new addition to the things that make Germany important to Murro. Here, or more precisely in Zweibrücken, located 400 kilometers northwest of Munich, Wilma Murto broke into the awareness of the entire pole vault world on January 31, 2016. At that time, Murto already made the above-mentioned youth ME. However, the parents’ relationship with Germany goes back much further.
– 31 years ago, I did a four-month internship in Nuremberg, where I lived Lydiaat a lady named That same year, I got engaged to Mati. The following year there was already a wedding, to which we invited Lydia as a guest. We hadn’t seen each other since the wedding, Sari says.
Nuremberg is only a two-hour drive north of Munich, so it was an excellent opportunity for a reunion.
– We invited Lydia to watch the qualifying, and she came. At the age of 77, he walked briskly with a cane. What has Lydia been up to today? By the way, she doesn’t follow sports and was completely on the bike in the qualifiers, Sari thinks before getting on the subway that takes her to the Finnish team’s hotel.
The championship drug is not visible from the outwardly calm Murro and the manager Heiska, who is used to winning championships. At the stop at the destination, however, it becomes clear that none of the trio’s thoughts are on a normal course.
Even though the Murros have traveled the same subway route for several days, alternating days, Heiska has to dig out the map from her backpack.
– Where are we really? the trio updates and laughs.