Urheilu will show the Paavo Nurmi Games on Tuesday, June 13. The broadcast starts at Areena at 16:25 and on TV2 at 18:00.
The crowd went wild at Oslo’s Bislett Stadium on July 1, 2021, when Karsten Warholm crossed the finish line in a new world record time of 46.70 on a fenced track lap.
When looking at the flagship events of Nordic athletics, the ME delicacy has been the exclusive right of Norwegians this millennium, which has been served five times at Bislett.
The first Bislett Games were organized in June 1964, after which the event has seen a total of 23 adult ME results ratified by the International Association of Athletics Federations.
The number is staggering, because only three ME results have been produced in Stockholm’s DN-gala, organized since 1967 and belonging to the Diamond League like Bislett. The previous one saw the light of day on June 7, 1997, when Wilson Kipketer your 800m ME time 1.41.73.
Even the late Helsinki GP has a more recent ME under its belt than Stockholm: Haile Gebrselassie stopped the 5,000 meter time trial at the Olympic Stadium at 12:39.36 on June 13, 1998.
For the past ten years, Finland’s equivalent to the Diamond League games of its western neighbors has been the Paavo Nurmi Games. The Turku running legend’s title race has operated in recent years with a budget of 400,000–500,000 euros, which is about four times smaller than its Norwegian counterparts.
Despite this, from the beginning, PNG has belonged to the absolute elite of the athletics games, not only in terms of its arrangements and atmosphere, but also in terms of results.
Only the budget separates PNG from Diamond League status.
A cheap ME company
PNG in its current form started in Turku in 2013, but the roots of the event go back to 1957. At that time, the Turku Sports Association organized the first Paavo Nurme Games as a present for Nurme’s 60th birthday.
When we talk about Nurme, the first thing that comes to mind is the nine Olympic gold medals he won. Less noticeable are the 20 personal MEs he ran. Although Nurmi, who died in 1973, is the all-time Finnish record holder, not a single ME has yet been seen in the games bearing his name.
Nurmi would hardly mind if this changed next year. Then it will be a hundred years since Nurmi’s ME considered the hardest, 10,000 meters on 30.06.2. It lasted for almost 13 years.
ME companies usually don’t come off cheap, but the start-up money paid to athletes who are capable of it usually gets too high for PNG’s budget. The expense item is simply not seen as a profitable investment, as it would mean cutting out other athlete coverage.
But there are also exceptional individuals. A shot putter Ryan Crouser currently brings the best to the table when it comes to the price-quality ratio of athletes: Crouser, who recently clocked a wild ME result of 23.56, according to Urheilu’s information, will be sold to the race organizer for a difficult 15,000 euros, even in its current condition.
For example, the pole star of Armand Duplant it’s pointless to attract people without starting money, which is at least 70,000 euros.
Crouser will arrive in Europe at the end of June, when he will participate with PNG in the athletics evening in Ostrava, which has the same ranking category.
For several years now, PNG has built an international leading event around the men’s discus and javelin, and this year’s competition is no exception.
This year, however, the women’s moukari is the only sport in which the entire World Cup medal trio from last summer is participating.
Especially in these sports, we will see a preview for the World Cup finals in Budapest, which are expected in August, which would certainly be to Nurme’s liking.
However, one has to ask if it’s time for PNG to try something new.
In contrast to the javelin, discus and moukari, it would be possible to break the tried-and-tested formula in the shot put competition by taking it, for example, to the core of Turku.
Responsible for PNG athlete acquisitions Arttu Salonen does an excellent job year after year, which is also reflected in the results: last year, PNG was the 19th biggest athletics event in the world in terms of results.
At least Crouser would not weaken the ranking if Salonen could be lured to Turku from the United States for next year.
There would have been an order for Vitone
In this year’s PNG event, Nurmi, a specialist in long distances, would certainly have liked to see the 5,000 meters race, which was last part of the competition program when men competed in 2016.
This year, women’s vito could have been marketed without worry as a women’s Finnish record company immediately after Camilla Richardson had smashed 10,000m SE on 20 May.
However, the early season results of the Finnish track and field athletes give the PNG organizers the opportunity to market the event as a potential SE party without Richardsson.
Whether we see Finnish records on Tuesday or not, in any case, PNG will be a world-class athletics competition this year as well, something that Takuu would be proud of Nurmi.
Urheilu will show the Paavo Nurmi Games on Tuesday, June 13. The broadcast starts at Areena at 16:25 and on TV2 at 18:00.