Mette
T?ss? lis?ys avaus aiheeseen.
You know when you are in Finland when ?
You know where you are when the crowd in the stadium spring to their feet and cheer while a javelin glides through the air still far from its landing site. The guys with the strong hands and rustic faces know to the nearest metre where it will come to earth. You could only be in Finland, where spectators have the deserved reputation of being the most knowledgeable in the world, particularly when it comes to track and field events. Of course, there are Finns who claim to be indifferent or just plain hostile towards sport but they would be regarded as folks with a pointless attitude problem. Most Finns love sport. Three out of four youngsters between the ages of three and eighteen say they practice some form of sport or voluntary physical recreation in addition to the compulsory dose they receive at school.
Now, we all know the dangers of excessive hero worship in sport, the situation when loyalty to a team or individual generates the aggressive group ethics that lead to crowd violence, hooliganism and destruction in the stadiums or streets of beautiful European cities just because those youthful dinosaurs, the football fans, are on the rampage. That is a problem Finland does not have. It is still fair to say that in this country spectators appreciate the aesthetic side of sport almost as much as they like to see their team win. Of course they get teary-eyed when "our boys" are victorious but they do not use the successes or failures of "our boys" as an excuse to unload their own personality problems on to the followers of the other side. Finnish spectators are no angels but, during my years of watching this country's four principal team sports, athletics, ice hockey, football and Finnish rules baseball, the worst I've seen the fans get up to is insulting the opposition verbally - and they are pretty good at that. In Finland, there is, admittedly, a high degree of sentimentality about sporting heroes (in the 1990s ice hockey stars became the main targets of infatuation) but the sentiment is tempered with sensible Finnish realism which holds that losing a match is not a reason for going to war.
The Finns, like any reasonable people, accept that some folk need folk heroes and they do not dismiss fondness for sport and its heroes as a symptom of immaturity. On the contrary, they generally see sport as a commendable form of human endeavour. This may be because in this small society top athletes of either gender tend not to behave like overpaid prima donnas. Even when they are overpaid they remain recognisable to the public as mortals, people who live next door. In the 1920s, the early years of Finnish independence, the dominant sporting hero was the long distance runner, Paavo Nurmi, whose name was turned into that yawn-inspiring sobriquet "the flying Finn." Because he was so famous in his day, his country's name became known, too. This was at the time when Finland needed to establish a presence internationally as an independent sovereign state after the centuries of rule by Sweden followed by the years under Russian domination. The winner of nine gold and three silver Olympic medals in the 1920s, and the holder of a myriad world records, Nurmi was a loner on the track, dour and remote in his prime, introspective and disillusioned with his athletic performances later in life.
That was then. Today's Finnish stars of sport are altogether more personable, more relaxed and, in growing numbers, wealthy. Think of Teemu Sel?nne, star of North American ice hockey, Jari Kurri, tireless dignitary of the NHL who retired from top-class hockey at the end of the 1997-98 season, Mika H?kkinen, 1998 and 1999 Formula One world champion, Tommi M?kinen, world rally driving champion in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999, Juha Kankkunen, also a four-time world rally champion, footballers Sami Hyypi? and Jari Litmanen, both with Liverpool in the English league, or Jani Sievinen, the record breaking swimmer. They are among today's idols, fully aware of their Finnish roots and their Finnish characteristics but burdened by neither. They speak the necessary foreign languages and they neither blush with shyness before a television camera, as their recent forebears used to, nor do they posture with conceit like the sporting stars on game shows in more pretentious cultures.
Incidentally, the activity known as Finland's national sport is Finnish-rules baseball (Finnish: pes?pallo) It has a big following in the Finnish heartland but internationally you could liken it to hurley across the sea in Ireland: loved locally by many but little known to outsiders.
From Finland's first Olympic appearance at the 1906 games in Athens until the 1970s, track and field, especially distance running and the javelin, were our showcase disciplines. But to relive Finland's last moment of greatness on the track we need to go back to the day in Montreal in 1976 when Lasse Viren had secured gold medals in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres, repeating his remarkable double victory of the Munich games four years earlier. Since Viren, there have been some big changes in Finnish sport. The key factor has been diversification. Athletics began to face rivals for the public's loyalty. Sensible devotees stopped wondering when Finland was going to produce a sprinter of the Carl Lewis class. We possibly could have, and I'm sorry we didn't, but why worry unduly when there are so many other sports in which Finns, individually and in teams, now excel: ice hockey, soccer, swimming, cross-country skiing, ski jumping and motor sports. Athletics today is notable for its paucity of top class contestants. The sport that once was synonymous with Finland has had to take its place in the queue for public adulation. But it is probably the one that the Finns, in their hearts, still love best.
Helsinki Olympic Stadium
Outside
Inside
Memories of '52
The late British sports writer, administrator and Olympic winner, Harold Abrahams, remembering the 1952 Olympic Games wrote that they were splendidly organised and carried out in a fine spirit of international harmony. Finns still look back at the summer Games of 1952 as the last true festival of pure amateur Olympic sport. It was the year the Games were staged in Helsinki and they symbolised for the Finnish nation a return to normality after the recent years of war and hardship. Finland was smiling again and the thousands of foreign visitors who packed the Helsinki Olympic Stadium smiled with them. Helsinki was to have hosted the Games in 1940 but war spoiled that plan. London took them on in 1948 but four years later the Finns were ready. The massive war reparations demanded by the Soviet Union had been almost entirely paid off and it was time for a bit of celebrating.
Helsinki Olympic Games
opening ceremony
The Olympic Games brought the nation together in a way not seen again until 1995 when Finland won the World Ice Hockey Championship for the first time. But the hero of the Helsinki Games was not a Finn. The great Nurmi was there but at the age of 55 his assignment was to carry the Olympic torch into the stadium. The athlete who made the 1952 Games his own was the great Czech, Emil Zatopek. His three gold medals and domination of the long distances raised him close to the stature of Nurmi. It is no surprise that after Helsinki Zatopek was treated like an honorary Finn during his visits to this country. He triumphed in the long-distance running events that so inspire Finnish track and field fans and they loved him for it. Finland's medals in 1952 came in boxing, wrestling and canoeing. This was not because of a sudden fall in the standard of track and field in Finland but because of the huge expansion of athletics around the world that began after World War II. Some of the stimulus for that surge in popularity came from Finland, winner of 30 Olympic track and field gold medals in the five Games between 1920 and 1936.
