Paavo Nurmi

At 76 years old, Paavo Nurmi has this physical status:

Nurmi made his international debut in August at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. He took his first medal by finishing second to Frenchman Joseph Guillemot in the 5000 m. This would remain the only time that Nurmi lost to a non-Finnish runner in the Olympics. He went on to win gold medals in his other three events: the 10,000 m, sprinting past Guillemot on the final curve and improving his personal best by over a minute, the cross country race, beating Sweden's Eric Backman, and the cross country team event where he helped Heikki Liimatainen and Teodor Koskenniemi defeat the British and Swedish teams. Nurmi's success brought electric lighting and running water for his family in Turku. Nurmi, however, was given a scholarship to study at the Teollisuuskoulu industrial school in Helsinki.

Buoyed by his defeat to Guillemot, Nurmi's races became a series of experiments which he analyzed meticulously. Previously known for his blistering pace on the first few laps, Nurmi started to carry a stopwatch and spread his efforts more uniformly over the distance. He aimed to perfect his technique and tactics to a point where the performances of his rivals would be rendered meaningless. Nurmi set his first world record on the 10,000 m in Stockholm in 1921. In 1922, he broke the world records for the 2000 m, the 3000 m and the 5000 m. A year later, Nurmi added the records for the 1500 m and the mile. His feat of holding the world records for the mile, the 5000 m and the 10,000 m at the same time has not been matched by any other athlete before or since. Nurmi also tested his speed in the 800 m, winning the 1923 Finnish Championships with a new national record. After excelling in mathematics, Nurmi graduated as an engineer in 1923 and returned home to prepare for the upcoming Olympic Games.

Nurmi's trip to the 1924 Summer Olympics was endangered by a knee injury in the spring of 1924, but he recovered and resumed training twice a day. On 19 June, Nurmi tried out the 1924 Olympic schedule at the Eläintarha Stadium in Helsinki by running the 1500 m and the 5000 m inside an hour, setting new world records for both distances. In the 1500 m final at the Olympics in Paris, Nurmi ran the first 800 m almost three seconds faster. His only challenger, Ray Watson of the United States, gave up before the last lap and Nurmi was able to slow down and coast to victory ahead of Willy Schärer, H. B. Stallard and Douglas Lowe, still breaking the Olympic record by three seconds. The 5000 m final started in less than two hours, and Nurmi faced a tough challenge from countryman Ville Ritola, who had already won the 3000 m steeplechase and the 10,000 m. Ritola and Edvin Wide figured that Nurmi must be tired and tried to burn him off by running at world-record pace. Realizing that he was now racing the two men and not the clock, Nurmi tossed his stopwatch onto the grass. The Finns later passed the Swede as his pace faded and continued their duel. On the home straight, Ritola sprinted from the outside but Nurmi increased his pace to keep his rival a metre behind.

In the cross country events, the heat of 45 °C (113 °F), caused all but 15 of the 38 competitors to abandon the race. Eight finishers were taken away on stretchers. One athlete began to run in tiny circles after reaching the stadium, until setting off into the stands and knocking himself unconscious. Early leader Wide was among those who blacked out along the course, and was incorrectly reported to have died at the hospital. Nurmi exhibited only slight signs of exhaustion after beating Ritola to the win by nearly a minute and a half. As Finland looked to have lost the team medal, the disoriented Liimatainen staggered into the stadium, but was barely moving forward. An athlete ahead of him fainted 50 metres from the finish, and Liimatainen stopped and tried to find his way off the track, thinking he had reached the finish line. After having ignored shouts and kept the spectators in suspense for a while, he turned into the right direction, realised his situation and reached the finish in 12th place and secured team gold. Those present at the stadium were shocked by what they had witnessed, and Olympic officials decided to ban cross country running from future Games.

In the 3000 m team race on the next day, Nurmi and Ritola again finished first and second, and Elias Katz secured the gold medal for the Finnish team by finishing fifth. Nurmi had won five gold medals in five events, but he left the Games embittered as the Finnish officials had allocated races between their star runners and prevented him from defending his title in the 10,000 m, the distance that was dearest to him. After returning to Finland, Nurmi set a 10,000 m world record that would last for almost 13 years. He now held the 1500 m, the mile, the 3000 m, the 5000 m and the 10,000 m world records simultaneously.

In early 1925, Nurmi embarked on a widely publicised tour of the United States. He competed in 55 events (45 indoors) during a five-month period, starting at a sold-out Madison Square Garden on 6 January. His debut was a copy of his feats in Helsinki and Paris. Nurmi defeated Joie Ray and Lloyd Hahn to win the mile and Ritola to win the 5000 m, again setting new world records for both distances. Nurmi broke ten more indoor world records in regular events and set several new best times for rarer distances. He won 51 of the events, abandoned one race and lost two handicap races along with his final event; a half-mile race at the Yankee Stadium, where he finished second to American track star Alan Helffrich. Helffrich's victory ended Nurmi's 121-race, four-year win streak in individual scratch races at distances from 800 m upwards. Although he hated losing more than anything, Nurmi was the first to congratulate Helffrich. The tour made Nurmi extremely popular in the United States, and the Finn agreed to meet President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. Nurmi left America fearing that he had competed too often and burned himself out.

Nurmi struggled to maintain motivation for running, heightened by his rheumatism and Achilles tendon problems. He quit his job as a machinery draughtsman in 1926 and began studying business intensively. As Nurmi started a new career as a share dealer, his financial advisors included Risto Ryti, director of the Bank of Finland. In 1926, Nurmi broke Wide's world record for the 3000 m in Berlin and then improved the record in Stockholm, despite Nils Eklöf repeatedly trying to slow his pace down in an effort to aid Wide. Nurmi was furious at the Swedes and vowed never to race Eklöf again. In October 1926, he lost a 1500 m race along with his world record to Germany's Otto Peltzer. This marked the first time in over five years and 133 races that Nurmi had been defeated at a distance over 1000 m. In 1927, Finnish officials barred him from international competition for refusing to run against Eklöf at the Finland-Sweden international, cancelling the Peltzer rematch scheduled for Vienna. Nurmi ended his season and threatened, until late November, to withdraw from the 1928 Summer Olympics. At the 1928 Olympic trials, Nurmi was left third in the 1500 m by eventual gold and bronze medalists Harri Larva and Eino Purje, and he decided to concentrate on the longer distances. He added steeplechase to his program, although he had only tried the event twice before, the latest being a two-mile steeplechase victory at the 1922 British Championships.

At the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Nurmi competed in three events. He won the 10,000 m by staying right behind Ritola until sprinting past him on the home straight. Before the 5000 m final, Nurmi injured himself in his qualifying heat for the 3000 m steeplechase. He fell on his back at the water jump, spraining his hip and foot. Lucien Duquesne stopped to help him up, and Nurmi thanked the Frenchman by pacing him past the field and offered him the heat win, which Duquesne gracefully refused. In the 5000 m, Nurmi tried to repeat his move on Ritola but had to watch his teammate pull away instead. Nurmi, looking more exhausted than ever before, only barely managed to keep Wide behind and take silver. Nurmi had little time to rest or nurse his injuries as the 3000 m steeplechase started the next day. Struggling with the hurdles, Nurmi let Finland's steeplechase specialist Toivo Loukola escape into the distance. On the final lap, he sprinted clear of the others and finished nine seconds behind the world-record setting Loukola; Nurmi's time also bettered the previous record. Although Ritola did not finish, Ove Andersen completed a Finnish sweep of the medals.

Nurmi stated to a Swedish newspaper that "this is absolutely my last season on the track. I am beginning to get old. I have raced for fifteen years and have had enough of it." However, Nurmi continued running, turning his attention to longer distances. In October, he broke the world records for the 15 km, the 10 miles and the one hour run in Berlin. Nurmi's one-hour record stood for 17 years, until Viljo Heino ran 129 metres further in 1945. In January 1929, Nurmi started his second U.S. tour from Brooklyn. He suffered his first-ever defeat in the mile to Ray Conger at the indoor Wanamaker Mile. Nurmi was seven seconds slower than in his world record run in 1925, and it was immediately speculated if the mile had become too short a distance for him. In 1930, he set a new world record for the 20 km. In July 1931, Nurmi showed he still had pace for the shorter distances by beating Lauri Lehtinen, Lauri Virtanen and Volmari Iso-Hollo, and breaking the world record on the now-rare two miles. He was the first runner to complete the distance in less than nine minutes. Nurmi planned to compete only in the 10,000 m and the marathon in the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, stating that he "won't enter the 5000 metres for Finland has at least three excellent men for that event."

In April 1932, the executive council of the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) suspended Nurmi from international athletics events pending an investigation into his amateur status by the Finnish Athletics Federation. The Finnish authorities criticized the IAAF for acting without a hearing, but agreed to launch an investigation. It was customary of the IAAF to accept the final decision of its national branch, and the Associated Press wrote that "there is little doubt that if the Finnish federation clears Nurmi the international body will accept its decision without question." A week later, the Finnish Athletics Federation ruled in favor of Nurmi, finding no evidence for the allegations of professionalism. Nurmi was hopeful that his suspension would be lifted in time for the Games.

On 26 June 1932 Nurmi started his first marathon at the Olympic trials. Not drinking a drop of liquid, he ran the old-style 'short marathon' of 40.2 km (25 miles) in 2:22:03.8 – on the pace to finish in about 2:29:00, just under Albert Michelsen's marathon world record of 2:29:01.8. At the time, he led Armas Toivonen, the eventual Olympic bronze medalist, by six minutes. Nurmi's time was the new unofficial world record for the short marathon. Confident that he had done enough, Nurmi stopped and retired from the race owing to problems with his Achilles tendon. The Finnish Olympic Committee entered Nurmi for both the 10,000 m and the marathon. The Guardian reported that "some of his trial times were almost unbelievable," and Nurmi went on to train at the Olympic Village in Los Angeles despite his injury. Nurmi had set his heart on ending his career with a marathon gold medal, as Kolehmainen had done shortly after the First World War.

Less than three days before the 10,000 m, a special commission of the IAAF, consisting of the same seven members that had suspended Nurmi, rejected the Finn's entries and barred him from competing in Los Angeles. Sigfrid Edström, president of the IAAF and chairman of its executive council, stated that the full congress of the IAAF, which was scheduled to start the next day, could not reinstate Nurmi for the Olympics but merely review the phases and political angles related to the case. The AP called this "one of the slickest political maneuvers in international athletic history", and wrote that the Games would now be "like Hamlet without the celebrated Dane in the cast." Thousands protested against the action in Helsinki. Details of the case were not released to the press, but the evidence against Nurmi was believed be the sworn statements from German race promoters that Nurmi had received $250–500 per race when running in Germany in autumn 1931. The statements were produced by Karl Ritter von Halt, after Edström had sent him increasingly threatening letters warning that if evidence against Nurmi were not provided he would be "unfortunately obliged to take stringent action against the German Athletics Association."

On the eve of the marathon, all the entrants of the race except for the Finns, whose positions were known, filed a petition asking Nurmi's entry to be accepted. Edström's right-hand man Bo Ekelund, secretary general of the IAAF and head of the Swedish Athletics Federation, approached the Finnish officials and stated that he might be able to arrange for Nurmi to participate in the marathon outside the competition. However, Finland maintained that as long as the athlete is not declared a professional, he must have the right to participate in the race officially. Although he had been diagnosed with a pulled Achilles tendon two weeks earlier, Nurmi stated he would have won the event by five minutes. The congress concluded without Nurmi being declared a professional, but the council's authority to disbar an athlete was upheld on a 13–12 vote. However, due to the close vote, the matter was postponed until the 1934 meet in Stockholm. Finns charged that the Swedish officials had used devious tricks in their campaign against Nurmi's amateur status, and ceased all athletic relations with Sweden. A year earlier, controversies on the track and in the press had led Finland to withdraw from the Finland-Sweden athletics international. After Nurmi's suspension, Finland did not agree to return to the event until 1939.

Nurmi refused to turn professional, and continued running as an amateur in Finland. In 1933, he ran his first 1500 m in three years and won the national title with his best time since 1926. At the IAAF meet in August 1934, Finland launched two proposals that lost. The council then brought forward its resolution empowering it to suspend athletes that it finds in violation of the IAAF amateur code. With a 12–5 vote, with many not voting, Nurmi's suspension from international amateur athletics became definite. Less than three weeks later, Nurmi retired from running with a 10,000 m victory in Viipuri on 16 September 1934. Nurmi remained undefeated in the distance throughout his 14-year top-level career. In cross country running, his win streak lasted 19 years.

Career summary (1920–34)

The starts figure excludes heats, handicap races, relays, and events where Nurmi raced alone against relay teams.

The starts figure excludes heats, handicap races, relays, and events where Nurmi raced alone against relay teams.

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