Paris Olympics on channels 26.7.–11.8. Go to the competition website here. You can find the entire program of the games here.
Twelve Olympic medals, nine of which are gold. Five of these in one Games, in Paris 1924.
Paavo Nurmen success has stood the test of time. The running legend’s achievements in Paris have remained unbroken for a hundred years.
Nurmi shouted at the athletics crowd both inside and outside the stadiums. He is the only one to have won an Olympic medal in seven different forms of athletics. In the years 1920–1928, Nurmi achieved medals in 10,000, 5,000, 3,000 (team) and 1,500 meters. On top of them, precious metal was hung around his neck both in cross-country running (individual and team) and in the 3,000-meter hurdles.
Especially the last two require excellent body control from the runner, which was one of the trademarks of Nurmi, who was born in Turku and lived for a long time.
– Nurmi trained in the early stages of his career by running after freight trains. In that, the step length had to be the length of the track boards, a journalist and non-fiction writer closely familiar with the life of Nurmi Antero Raevuori87, recalls.
Raevuori wrote an extensive historical work on Nurmi, Paavo Nurmi, jooksijai kuningas, which was published in 1987. Ten years later, an expanded edition of the book was made.
Nurmi broke into the consciousness of the young nation by winning three gold medals and a silver at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. The success also caught the attention of another domestic running legend.
Titled the Flying Finn due to his Olympic success in Stockholm in 1912 Hannes Kolehmainen was enthusiastic about Nurme and encouraged him to expand his training repertoire. When young Nurmi ended up in Helsinki after the Antwerp Games to study in the mechanical engineering department of the School of Industry, Kolehmainen took his talent to Kallio’s dance clubs.
– During his student days, Nurmi lived as a tenant in Kallio’s library building. The neighborhood was teeming with dance venues. SpongeBob went there with great pleasure. Kolehmainen had said that he should get more flexibility and tone in his legs, which he would get from dancing, Raevuori says.
Raevuori did not have time to meet Nurme, who died in 1973. The numerous interviews conducted with people who knew the runner legend and the study of contemporary writings painted a picture for Raevuore that Nurmi, who was known as a true trainee, was not an “inspiring groomsman for anyone to dance with”.
– Now this is just my personal opinion, but Nurmi didn’t go to dances because he would hit on some pretty girl. Everything was just for him to run well.
There was even a legend about Nurmu that he practiced dancing at home with a pillow.
– The memories are already starting to fray, where did I find that information, Raevuori says.
The legacy lives on strong
One of the most famous landmarks in the center of Paris is the Notre Dame church, from which the Monnaie de Paris money museum is located just a stone’s throw away.
One hundred years ago, the museum functioned as a mint, where the five gold medals won by Nurmi were cast. Now the medals have returned to their original places on behalf of the Nurme family.
In the museum, there are a lot of athletics legends from different parts of the world paying respect to Nurmi’s record-breaking achievements.
– What Paavo Nurmi did a hundred years ago is incredible, the great Moroccan runner of the 1990s and 2000s Hicham El Guerrouj Suin says with a smile.
Besides Nurme, El Guerrouj is the only runner who has been able to win the 1,500 and 5,000 meters in one Olympics. Although Nurmi only had an hour in Paris between finals, while El Guerrouj had three days between finals in Athens 80 years after the Finn’s star moment.
– There was nothing normal as a runner in Nurme. He was great, El Guerrouj praises.
The Moroccan champion is not alone in his words. Having run the 1,500 meter world record in 1972 Filbert Bayi has arrived to pay his respects to Nurme from his home country of Tanzania.
From Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam, the journey to Paris can be made by air in a brisk ten hours with a layover.
In 1924, it took Nurmi and the Finnish team almost a week to get from Helsinki to Paris. First, the team traveled more than 1,300 kilometers by ship to Antwerp, Belgium, from where the rest of the journey was handled by rail. And the same route in the other direction. Nurmi’s dancing skills were used on long ship journeys.
Africans only came in the 1960s
The five-ring races were held in Paris in 1924 with a very different group of participants than in Bay’s peak years.
Of the competition trips, only in the cross-country race did Nurmi meet one African runner, a South African who finished ninth Len Richardson.
The cross-country race in Paris has been described as the toughest competition in the history of athletics. In the sun, the temperature reached over 50 degrees, and only 15 of the 38 runners who set out made it to the finish line.
Ten runners had to be hospitalized, including one who was born in Finland but represented Sweden, who fell off Nurme a kilometer before the finish line Edwin Wide. He did not take office until three hours after the race. The competition underlined Nurme’s exceptional endurance.
– When it was fine, it didn’t feel like anything. When a person is fit, all runs are relatively easy, Nurmi stated in a rare TV interview in 1970.
The heavy journey took its toll
However, after the Paris Olympics, Nurmi found his limits. In 1925, he was invited to the United States for a 90-day show tour. During that time, he competed in 55 races, winning 53 of them.
– It was a bit too heavy. That’s where I spent myself too much. Back then, all trips were made by rail. The nights had to be slept in a railway carriage, Nurmi said in the aforementioned interview.
Even though Nurmi was a superstar of his time, he didn’t like publicity outside the competition and being the center of attention. The international media was able to notice this feature, but despite that, the US magazine The New York Times alone wrote 70 articles about Nurmi during the tour.
President of the United States Calvin Coolidge invited Nurmen to the White House, where the Finn received a state guest reception. Nurmi could have gotten top-level accommodation, but she wanted to eat Finnish food in a modest apartment of Finnish immigrants, because she wanted to be in peace.
The American newspapers did not ignore this aspect.
“He walks in a frightened coat like an unreserved wanderer. He lives in some basement trap, even though he was offered a luxurious villa on Long Island. He marches through a large car factory in Detroit without saying a word to the hosts. Mr. Nurmi not only says he hates photographers and interviewers, but he also means what he says and runs like the devil himself is chasing him. What’s wrong with that man?” the documentary film Paavo Nurmi – the best of all is written by an American magazine.
The last bet
Heavy competition with rail and ship journeys inoculated Nurmi’s result level in the following years, but in the end Nurmi also got to enjoy the fruits of development.
– It must have been in 1927, when Nurmi traveled to Berlin by plane. It was the first time a Finnish athlete went on a competitive trip by plane, Raevuori recalls.
Nurmi’s last trip to the Olympics as a competitor was to Amsterdam in 1928. Although Nurmi was again in golden shape, the Finnish Olympic Committee initially considered withdrawing from the Games.
The Finnish sports management had decided that Finland would not participate in the Olympics. One of the reasons, the management stated, was that the Finnish so-called types of bread. The second reason given was that instead of elite sports, the focus should be on the sports hobbies of the broad masses.
The decision to boycott did not materialize, Nurmi made it to Amsterdam and won his last three Olympic medals: 10,000-meter gold and silver in the 5,000-meter and 3,000-meter hurdles.
Thanks to them, in 2024 Nurmi will still be at the top as the most successful all-around athlete of all time in the history of the Olympics.
Widespread respect
Nurmi’s unbroken records are the main reason why dozens of athletics Olympic winners, world champions and ME champions have gathered in the Parisian money museum.
None of the legends present had time to meet Nurme. A four-time Olympic champion came closest Lasse Virén October 2nd in 1973.
– The day SpongeBob died, SpongeBob’s American friend Leo Sjogren came to Finland. He arranged a meeting for us in Helsinki. Leo called in the morning to just come to Helsinki, but now we’re going there with different thoughts, Virén recalls in front of the Monnaie de Paris.
President of the International Athletics Federation Sebastian Cohen according to Nurme’s legacy still lives on strong.
– His achievements do not pale next to anyone. He is one of the greatest in athletics. Now and always, Coe sums up the meaning of Nurme.
Sources: Paavo Nurmi, the king of runners and the documentary film Paavo Nurmi – the best of the best.