PLEASE NOTE COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS All rights reserved. No part of this web publication or the booklet in which it was originally published in 1996 may be produced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, without written permission of the publishers. "Flying & Throwing" is written and published by Chris Turner. Copyright C.J. Turner 1996. Chris Turner. email - athletics@nurmi.clara.net. fax: 44 1328 855264. FLYING & THROWING PREFACE This pamphlet offers the reader a brief summary of Finnish athletics history during the twentieth century and in turn, a flavour of the singularly Finnish passion for everything to do with athletics. This is the second, revised edition of "Flying & Throwing" (pub. 1993) which was originally written as a special booklet for the British spectators of the Track & Field Tours group who attended the 1994 European Championships in Helsinki, Finland. Chris Turner, 1996. FLYING & THROWING SIBELIUS, MANNERHEIM, KEKKONEN In the Finnish national consciousness, three figures loom large - Sibelius, Mannerheim and Kekkonen. Each of these men, Jean Sibelius through his music, Marshal Mannerheim for his military & political feats and Urho Kekkonen for his national & international diplomacy, have inspired, founded and forged the Finnish state since its formal independence in 1917. Yet while this musical, military and political triumvirate certainly must take much of the credit for the consolidation and survival of democratic Finland in the shadow of its former master and giant neighbour, Russia, it would be too simplistic to conclude that this was the end of the story. There has always been a fourth "estate" upon which the Finnish nation was originally founded and on which it is still based today, which is the Finns overwhelming passion for all types of sport, in particular cross country skiing in the winter and track & field athletics in the summer. At this point, it should be remembered that, quite appropriately, one of the "big three", Urho Kekkonen, as well as having been the most influential of all Finnish Presidents, was also an excellent athlete in his youth and was national high jump champion in 1924. Nothing throughout this century has so inspired or personified the Finnish character than it's love for athletics, especially long distance running and javelin throwing. It would not be too great an exaggeration to say that the names of Sibelius, Mannerheim and Kekkonen, could in terms of prestige in the eyes of most Finns, as easily be exchanged with the names of the sporting "gods", Kolehmainen, Nurmi & Jarvinen, such is the importance of sport to the Finns. It is hard as an Englishman, with national political, military, literary heroes in abundance, and with an English national identity generally settled and secure since the eleventh century AD, to conceive of the importance that athletics and in particular, Olympic competition, has for the Finnish people. In the words of Sebastian Coe - "Many western nations have their strong athletic traditions. France and Belgium have had their long distance men, Italy her sprinters, Great Britain her middle distance record breakers. All have their idols, their occasional and ecstatically received gold medals, and their frequent but vain attempts down the field. None, though, with all their human resources, has the sheer will to win that characterises Finland. The Finns themselves ascribe it to something they call "SISU", some combination of pride and stubborness and guts. To a Finn with more than his fair share of sisu, all concepts but winning seem to disappear, all temptation to compromise is resisted, and he becomes twice the competitor, twice the opponent" (note 1). Finnish athletes have over the century helped to define the pride and passion of what it is to be a Finn. The average Finn doesn't care that their neighbours and old colonial masters, Sweden and Russia are so much bigger, the demographic and geographic statistics cannot be changed, as on the Olympic roll of honour it is tiny Finland which has had the greatest triumphs. Track & Field is the most international of all sports. The International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) has more member nations than any other sporting organisation, in fact it even has more members than the United Nations! Yet despite the size of the sport, by the end of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Finland with a population of only five million, about the size of greater London, has still won more men's track & field gold medals (47) than any other nation in the world with the exception of the USA. Yes, Finnish male athletes have won more Olympic athletics titles than Britain's (43), Germany's (29) or even Russia's (40) men's teams!(note.2) Athletics is a religion to the Finns. The Olympics and the Finnish success within them are the embodiment of what it means to be a Finn., and it is not too extreme to say that the Finns really are the Olympics 'chosen people'. 1906 - THE FOUNDATIONS OF FINNISH SUCCESS Though the feat came "only" at the Athens Interim Olympic Games of 1906, the first Finn to strike Olympic gold was the muscular figure of Verner Jarvinen in the Greek style Discus. Commonly known as "Father" Jarvinen, Verner was both the founder of a long line of Finnish Olympic champions and more directly, the father to a very talented family of four sons. Yrjo and Kalle were both good athletes, the latter setting a Finnish Shot record in 1932 but it was the third & fourth sons, Akilles and Matti Jarvinen who set the world alight with their ability in the decathlon & javelin respectively. Akilles was three times world decathlon recordholder and twice Olympic silver medallist, where as Matti was 1932 Olympic javelin champion and set a staggering total of ten world records in that event, earning the title of "Mr Javelin". Even today, the vast majority of Olympic nations have a worse track & field record than that of the marvellous Jarvinen family. Yet whilst their father Verner Jarvinen was the first to strike gold, it is the performances of Hannes Kolehmainen which put Finnish sport truly on the world map. Kolehmainen's remarkable 5,000 & 10,000 metres double in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, the first time these two events had been included on the programme, set the pattern for a line of memorable Finnish victories. Yet as well as these two golds, Hannes also took the individual laurels in the Olympic cross country of 1912 and returned to the Olympic arena in 1920 and also won the Marathon title! NURMI!! In the wake of Kolehmainen's Stockholm successes, the youth of Finland was inspired to take up sports, and this spark of inspiration shone no brighter than in the figure of Paavo Nurmi, whose inspiration was Kolehmainen. Paavo Nurmi during his Olympic career, burnished his name indelibly into both national & world sports history and is undisputably one of the sporting greats of the twentieth century. Nurmi captured an outstanding twelve Olympic medals, nine gold and three silver in the three Olympic games between 1920 and 1928 and amassed a total of twenty two world records. Nurmi's Olympic medal tally has yet to be surpassed by any athlete and his world record total was only bettered recently by the efforts of the Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergy Bubka. Such is Nurmi's reputation, that more than 15 years after his death in 1973, and over 60 years since his last Olympic appearance, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) voted Nurmi the greatest 5,000 metres and second greatest 10,000 metres runner of all time. The best of Nurmi's competition years was the season of 1924 and the Paris Olympics of that year. Nurmi on the evening of June 19th, with a gap of only 50 minutes between two races, set a world 1,500 metres record in the first, and then in the second, a world 5,000 metres record! Yet if this were not enough, later in the year he repeated the feat again, albeit not in world record times, by winning both the 1,500m & 5,000m Olympic crowns, on this occasion with 75 minutes between each final. Among other successes at the Paris Olympics, Nurmi also demolished the rest of the world's distance runners in the Olympic cross country race which was run in excessive temperatures of thirty six degrees centigrade in the shade! Whilst most of the field either collapsed during the race or finished absolutely exhausted, Nurmi entered the stadium, almost one and half minutes in front of his closest rival & compatriot Ville Ritola. Furthermore, after crossing the finish line Nurmi even had the strength and audacity to jog into the infield and do a series of stretching exercises, as the remainder of the tired and depleted field staggered into the stadium! Due to the enormous furrow Nurmi cut across the face of athletics history, it is all too easy to forget Ville Ritola, five times Olympic champion and three times silver medallist. Ritola's steeplechase and 10,000 metres victories of 1924 were both won in world best/record times, and he alone of Nurmi's rivals can also be rightly called his peer. There is little doubt that Ritola, the forgotten champion, without the permanent shadow of Nurmi both at his shoulder on the track and over his own world marks in the record books, would today also be revered as one of the greats of track and field. 1920's & 30's - THE GLORIOUS DECADES Yet Finnish success was not just represented by individuals. Prior to 1939, the whole team established a track & field supremacy only matched by the United States. In each of the Olympic celebrations between 1912 and 1936 Finland finished runners up to the USA in the athletics medals table (note 3). Of most note, in both the 1920 & 1932 Olympics the Finns took all three places in the javelin, In the 1928 Amsterdam Games, a clean sweep was attained in the 3,000 metres Steeplechase and in the 1936 Olympics, the Finnish "juggernaut" of Salminen, Askola & Volmari Iso Hollo, swept aside all challengers for a 1,2,3 in the 10,000 metres. The successes of Kolehmainen, Nurmi and Ritola, were copied by a host of other great Finnish athletes, in the 1920's & 30's. In the field, double Olympic javelin champion Jonni Myyra was joined in Olympic success by Armas Taipale and Elmer Niklander in the Discus, Ville Porhola in the Shot, Vilho Tuulos in the Triple Jump, Eero Lehtonen in the Pentathlon (in both1920 & 1924), Paavo Yrjola in the Decathlon and of course the great Matti Jarvinen, whom we have already mentioned. The track and road was also alive with new Olympic champions, Albin Stenross in the 1924 Olympic Marathon, and Harri Larva and Toivo Loukola in the 1,500m and Steeplechase finals of the 1928 games, respectively. Nothing could seemingly stop the Finnish onslaught, with Finnish victories by Iso Hollo (1932 & 36 Steeplechase), Lauri Lehtinen (1932 Los Angeles 5,000metres), Gunnar Hockert (1936 Berlin 5,000m) and Ilmari Salminen (1936 Berlin 10,000 metres), who also took the 1934 & 38 European 10,000 metres titles. World records also fell to Finland in abundance. As well as Akilles Jarvinen's two in the Decathlon and the long string of successes for his brother Matti, there were a veritable shoal of records netted by athletes such as Eino Borg-Purje (1924 2000m) Bengt Sjostedt (1931 110m hurdles), Eino Penttila (1927 javelin), Yrjo Nikkanen (1938 Javelin x 2). Furthermore, on top of their Olympic successes, Lehtinen, Salminen and Hockert also capped their achievements with a string of world records from two miles to 10,000 metres. TAISTO MAKI Yet no summary of pre-war running can be complete without the name of Taisto Maki, who due to the onset of world war two in 1939, missed out on the opportunity to attain Olympic glory. Maki, born in the small town of Rekola, was a shepherd by trade and had the nickname of the 'Rekola Herdboy'. In 1938, Maki set a world 10,000 metres record and became the European 5,000 metres champion. However, the next season was to be completely his own, as on the 16th June 1939, Maki set the first two (3 miles & 5,000m) of five world records he would run in that year! Yet none of these runs were finer than his 10,000 metres record of 17th September 1939, in which, with a finishing time of 29.52.6 minutes, he became the first man to run under 30 minutes for this distance. Before the start of the race the stadium announcer, exuding his confidence in both Finnish running and Maki's personal abilities, made the now famous remark that he hoped Taisto Maki would "entertain the crowd for a little under half an hour"! Thus by the end of 1939 and the onset of the second world war Finnish runners were without equal. There are few statistics which better illustrate Finnish running power in this pre-war period, than that of the 10,000 metres world all-list at the end of 1939. Not only were the top five runners, Maki, Salminen, Nurmi, Tuominen and Pekuri, all Finnish, but out of the top 10, only Kusocinski (Poland), the 1932 Olympic 10,000 metres champion, was not Finnish born!(note 4). VIREN, THE SECOND NURMI. Over thirty years later, with the memory of such Finnish dominance fast fading, Finnish long distance runners again set the world alight with a new breed of Flying Finn, epitomised especially by Lasse Viren and his unsurpassed "Golden Double Double" in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the Munich & Montreal Olympics. Finnish fans had had a long wait for a new king to arrive but with Viren they found a man fit to carry the mantle of Nurmi. Most remarkable of all Viren's races, was his first Olympic final, the 10,000 metres at Munich. Viren, though having fallen in the fourth kilometre of the race, managed quickly to get back on his feet, rejoin the leading pack of runners and go on to take the Olympic gold in a new world record! There have been few athletes in Olympic history who have shown the remarkable determination and total unwillingness to except defeat, as Viren did on that day in Munich. For Viren, the Olympics were everything, and despite world records at two miles and 5,000 metres outside the games, everything else was secondary. Courage or "sisu" similar to that shown by Viren in Munich was also displayed by another latter day heroine of Finnish track & field, Tiina Lillak. In 1983, Lillak in one of the most memorable moments of modern athletics history was crowned as the first ever women's World javelin champion, after her nerve tingling last throw snatched the title from Britain's Fatima Whitbread and sent the home crowd wild. Yet a year later, in the Los Angeles Olympics, Lillak, twice world record breaker, managed an even more remarkable feat by taking a very gallant silver, only 56 cm's from Tessa Sanderson's (G.B.) golden throw, whilst competing with a broken bone in her ankle! BISLETT 1946. Yet despite Finland's many exploits throughout this century on both the Olympic & World stage, two of the most notable occurrances in Finnish athletic history have taken place in the smaller, if no less intense arena of European Championship competition, during the games held in 1946 and those in 1971. The year of 1946, saw the third European Championships take place in the now famous Bislett stadium. It was the first major games since the end of the 2nd World War and all of Finland were confident that their pre war athletic dominance would continue. Their confidence seemed to be well founded. Finland was the land of distance running, the home of five Olympic champions in both the 5,000 & 10,000 metres. Only two Olympic titles had ever been lost by Finland in these events, Joseph Guillemot (Fra) had out sprinted the "rookey" Nurmi in the 1920 5,000 metres, and the Pole Janusz Kusocinski, had demolished steeplechase specialist Volmari Iso Hollo in the Los Angeles 10,000 metres in 1932. Furthermore, the Finns, in Viljo Heino, world record holder for 10,000 metres had a runner more than capable of continuing their great tradition. Heino was a supreme stylist, a most graceful runner who quickly acquired the nickname of the "Floating Finn". The Finnish public were not to be disappointed, as Heino backed by his countryman Helge Perala, who took the silver medal, easily lifted the European Gold in the 10,000 metres on the Bislett track. What's more, due to an organisational error, Finnish distance running was made to seem invincible, as at the same moment the marathon also finished, with Mikko Hietanen winning and Vaino Muinonen taking second. What a celebration of Finnish distance running! Yet despite these apparently good omens, "the Big Night of Bislett"(note 5) was to be the swansong of the golden age of Finnish running. Even though Heino set a short lived world 10,000 metres record in 1949, Zatopek's arrival on the world scene, his gold and silver in the 1948 London Olympics, where Finnish athletes failed to take a single track medal, signalled the end to the Finnish distance running hegemony. THE 1950's Yet whilst in the 1950's Finnish runners were no longer invincible, neither were they mere 'also rans'. Marathon running was on a particular high. Led by Veikko Karvonen's Olympic bronze in 1956 and European Championship win in 1954, & silver in 1950, Finland was the world's strongest marathon nation. There were also six wins in the Boston Marathon in the 1950's &60's. The 1956 national championship in particular, emphasised Finnish strength, as it was the fastest race of the year, with the first four men breaking 2 hours 20 minutes. There was success on the track too. The 1952 Olympics brought Finland two much treasured fourth places, Hannu Posti in the 10,000 metres and Olavi Rinteenpaa in the 3,000 metres Steeplechase. Most surprising of all, the gutsy figure of Voitto Hellsten brought Finland her first and to date only ever Olympic medal in the flat sprint events with a bronze in the 1956 Melbourne Games men's 400 metres! There were also a cluster of European Championship medals on the track, with Rinteenpaa and Erik Blomster taking the silver (1954) & bronze (1950) medals respectively in the Steeplechase and Vaino Koskela the bronze in the 1950 10,000 metres. ONLY A NATIONAL RECORD! Yet Finnish running history in the 1950's will always be associated with two world record breaking oddities. The first concerned the policy of the IAAF, which until 1954 considered the fastest performances in the 3,000 metres steeplechase only to be world bests and NOT world records. In 1953, Olavi Rinteenpaa ran a 8:44.4 minute steeplechase, which while accepted only as a world best (the last to be so) by the world governing body, by a quirk of fate was still ratified by the Finnish Association as a national record (note 6). So only a year later, the strange situation occurred that, with the IAAF's policy altered and another Finn, Pentti Karvonen setting two official world records of 8:47.8 & 8:45.4 mins, both of them slower than Rinteenpaa's world best time of a year before, for the first and presumably only time in athletics history, the Finnish national record was better than that of the world record! THE THREE OLAVI'S To this historical footnote must also be added a second sporting oddity, the 1,500 metres world record run of the three "Olavi's", Olavi Salsola, Olavi Salonen and Olavi Vuorsalo, all three of whom broke the old record of 3:40.6 minutes on 11th July 1957, in Turku, Finland. Only Salsola and Salonen were actually credited with the new record of 3:40.2 minutes, Vuorisalo's time being one hundredth of a second slower. Yet such glory was short lived, as the very next day Stanislav Jungwirth of Czechoslovakia smashed the Olavi's record, bringing it down to an amazing 3:38.1 minutes. Middle distance running had suddenly leapt into a new era, and what at the time had seemed such a glorious feat by the three Finns, was in fact the last gasp of glory for the nation's runners whose standards were falling quickly behind the rest of the world's elite. THE 1960'S - TOTAL RUNNING DISASTER. During the 1960s Finnish runners almost lost contact with the rest of the world. The contrast between the Finns and the rest was stark. When in 1965 Ron Clarke set a new 10,000m world record of 27:39.4 minutes, the Finnish record stood one minute & 41.6 seconds slower. Furthermore, in four Olympic Games - Melbourne, Rome , Tokyo and Mexico City, no Finn even reached a track final (except the 10,000 metres where there were no heats) let alone won a medal (note 7). Unlike Britain, where the harrier tradition has moulded athletics into the sport of TRACK & field, the sport of athletics to the Finns has always meant TRACK & FIELD. So in a climate of gloomy results on the track for Finland, the field events came to even greater prominence and runners were pushed to the side lines. Whereas runners were desperately trying to stay in contact with the rest of the world, athletes such as the 1962 world pole vault record breaker, Pentti Nikula and 1964 Olympic javelin champion, Pauli Nevala were leading the international scene. Furthermore, there had been no similar reduction in Finnish standards in the field events, as had been experienced by their athletes on the tracks since the end of the war. During the 1940's & 1950's, Finnish javelin throwing continued it's pre war success. Tapio Rautavaara took the 1948 Olympic title and Toivo Hyytiainen, the 1950 European gold and 1956 Olympic bronze. There was even a short lived world record in 1956 by the erratic Soini Nikkinen. Additional success also came to Finland via a string of Pole vaulters led by the 1954 & 1956 European Champion, Eeles Landstrom. Finns were even long jumping well, Jorma Valkama taking the Olympic Bronze in 1956 and Rainer Stenius, the European silver in 1962! Thus, comparing themselves with their colleagues in the field events, Finnish runners had by the 1960's developed a major inferiority complex. As such, runners simply did not believe in themselves and kept on changing their training schedules with no conviction that they would ever attain international success. THE LYDIARD INFLUENCE In a desperate bid to alter the situation the Finnish Federation invited many of the world's greatest coaches to tour and lecture in Finland and in 1966 finally took the plunge and issued the great Arthur Lydiard, coach to the legendary Peter Snell, with a short contract to coach in Finland. Lydiard's contribution to the Finnish running revival in the 1970's is still a hot topic for conversation in Finnish running circles, and his full contribution can never be accurately measured but what is beyond question is that runners started to stick to their training schedules, and what's more began to believe in themselves again. The athletes diet was changed and warm weather training was introduced and financed by the federation to avoid the worst excesses of the northern winter. Yet more importantly, Finns were taught that it was no good just relying on their great tradition magically to produce exceptional athletes. To get to the top you had to train hard! The first stirrings of a revival took place in 1968, when Jouko Kuha stunned the world by setting a new steeplechase world record. "Once again the Finns were doing what Kolehmainen and Nurmi had done before - setting themselves single mindedly at ambitious targets, prepared to work with every effort every week of the year, aiming to recapture what every Finn, athlete or not, considered his birthright - the reflected glory of Olympic gold"(note 8). 1971 - VAATAINEN, VAATAINEN, VAATAINEN! Yet it was not to be at the Olympics but rather at the European Championships in Helsinki's Olympic Stadium in 1971, 25 years after the triumphs of Bislett, that the renaissance in Finnish running was to begin in earnest with the double victories of the ex-sprinter Juha Vaatainen in the 5,000 & 10,000 metres. As a youth, Sebastian Coe recalls watching the first of these victories, the 10,000 metres, and has never seen a stadium erupt in the way the Olympic Stadium did on that night. The crowd went wild as Vaatainen outsprinted the defending champion Jurgen Haase (E. Germany) on the final lap. The Finnish spectators threw their seat cushions into the air and spilled on to the track with delight, Finnish officials picking up Vaatainen and tossing him up and down in their arms, the night sky noisily lit up with firecrackers let off in celebration. After Vaatainen came Pekka Vasala, 1972 Olympic 1,500m champion; Lasse Viren, four time Olympic gold medallist in the 5000m & 10,000m in 1972 & 76; Tapio Kantanen, 1972 Olympic steeplechase bronze medallist and Montreal 4th placer; Pekka Paivaranta, 1973 World cross country champion; Nina Holmen, 1974 Women's European 3,000 metres champion; Martti Vainio, 1978 European 10,000 metres champion and Kaarlo Maaninka, double Olympic medallist in the1980 Olympics 5000 & 10,000 metres;...after two decades of gloom, Finland once more asserted it's old authority. Yet the 1980's were again a difficult decade for Finnish running particularly with the Olympic drug disqualification of Martti Vainio in the 10,000 metres in 1984, Maaninka's blood exchanging confessions, and the failure in the early 80s to find any rising stars to match the glories of the 70s. THE GOLDEN JAVELIN YEARS However, problems on the track have in many ways been compensated for by the outstanding success of Finland's throwers, who have experienced their best post war period in the javelin. With the 1983 female world title going to Lillak, her world records in 1982 & 83; the 84 & 88 Olympic golds won by Arto Harkonen & Tapio Korjus respectively; unexpected gold for Seppo Raty in the 1987 Worlds; the female European title in 1990 snatched by Paivi Alafrantti; Kimmo Kinnunen's World Championship win in Tokyo in 1991 and Raty's two world records in 1991, and Rantanen's women's Olympic title in Atlanta, Finland has rewon its right to be called 'The Javelin Country'. Success has also come in the unexpected discipline of race walking. Reimo Salonen led the way by taking the 1982 European 50km Championship. More recently, Sari Essayah has blitzed the world's top women's 10km walkers, taking bronze in the 1991 World championships, 4th place in the Barcelona Olympics, gold in the 1993 World championships and a much treasured European title in front of her home crowd in Helsinki's Olympic Stadium in 1994. Valentin Kononen's 1995 World championship 50km walk gold in Gothenburg was also much heralded back in Finland, coming as it did on the back of his silver in the 1993 World championships. Thus, with the exception of the Stuttgart European championships of 1986 and the Barcelona Olympics of 1992, Finland's walkers and throwers have managed to give her a continuous midas touch in major championships since the 1980 Moscow Olympics, where Maaninka's bronze & silver were her only athletics medals. Furthermore, this line of Olympic, World & European gold medallists has helped Finland to live with the fact that in terms of her men, she has once again lost touch with the world's running elite. Finnish women have though done a little better than their male colleagues on the world's tracks and roads during the last few years. Paivi Tikkanen most notably won the Berlin Marathon in 1989 and took a creditable 4th place in the 1991 World championship 3,000 metres final. However, in the rise of the wonder junior, Annemari Sandell, who won the World junior cross country title and the senior European title in 1995, Finnish distance fans are again hailing the arrival of a new Flying Finn. HELI RANTANEN Throughout this century, 'the Flying Finns' and Finnish athletics success in general, has with a few exceptions, been an all male affair. In fact, until Heli Rantanen's javelin victory in Atlanta, a female win in any Olympic track & field event had eluded Finland! Throughout the century, Finnish society has had a curiously conservative view of women's sport only matched by that of Britain, and both countries combined to put up very strong opposition in the 1920's against the further development of women's events in the Olympic games. Despite the fact that in Finland, women's suffrage was achieved relatively early and her Parliament today holds a greater proportion of women members than any country in the rest of Europe, Finland throughout the century has remained a male dominated society. As such, the negative opinion about female sport has been difficult to dispel and so the development of women's sport has been very backward. Prior to 1996, despite the considerable success of Finland's men in the Olympics, the best performances by her women had 'only' been two silvers by Kaisa Parviainen in London (1948) and Tiina Lillak in Los Angeles(1984). Next to these performances, Pirjo Haggman's 4th place in the 1976 400 metres and Sari Essayah's 4th place in the 1992 Barcelona 10k walk had been the only other highlights. Outside the Olympic arena Finnish women have fared slightly better. In the European championships, both Nina Holmen (3,000m) and Riitta Salin (400m) struck gold in Rome in 1974. Salin's Rome win was also a world record, the first by a Finnish women in any track & field discipline. However, Tiina Lillak's two javelin world records (1982 & 83) and world title in 1983, produced the defining moment in the development of Finnish women's sport. After the memorable scenes in Helsinki's Olympic stadium, as Lillak's last throw struck gold and she sprinted off on a victory lap, no one in Finland could fail to take female sports seriously. Lillak's performance in Helsinki, which gave Finland her only gold of the championship, marked the watershed in the development of Finnish women's athletics. It was clear to everyone that considering the success of Finnish men had had during the century, that Finnish women were a virtually untapped resource. Since 1983, Finnish women have been the mainstay of so much Finnish success. Paivi Alafrantti's European javelin win in 1990 and Sari Essayah's world title in 1993 and European gold of 1994, have on each occasion gained Finland's only gold of the major championships. Heli Rantanen's victory in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics was thus a crucially important moment for Finnish women's sport. In a country which so adores the Olympics and has no greater passion than javelin throwing, Rantanen's victory provided the final seal of approval for women's sport. Finland at long last had a female Olympic track & field champion, and what's more it was in the javelin! Furthermore, not just in athletics but across all sports, it was Finland's only Olympic title in Atlanta, and so, that much sweeter a victory! THE 21st CENTURY AND BEYOND! Looking to the future, Finland's athletic prospects across the full range of disciplines looks more than rosey. The Finnish Federation's decision in the early 1980s to concentrate its attention and resources on the present and future elite, reducing its support for more recreational athletes seems to be to paying dividends. Recently, Finland has had increasing success at both the World and European Junior Championships, topped by it's performance at the 1995 European Juniors where she took a total of 5 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze medals and finished third on the final medal table. What's more important, the success was equally divided between the male and female squads. Set alongside this rising tide of success, the Finnish public's interest in track and field remains as fervent as ever. Even when there are few home stars to cheer, the Finnish public never loses its interest in the sport; as "in Finland the spectators are better educated athletically, than anywhere else in the world"(note 9). Primo Nebiolo, the IAAF President as a guest at the Sweden versus Finland match in Helsinki in August 1992, described Finland as the modern home of track & field, she was the temple of the sport and its high altar was the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki. Finnish athletics thus looks set for a promising future, The question as to whether under pressure from motor sports such as Rallying and Formula 1, or even Football, it will retain the same importance to the Finns, is an open one. However, with the combination of an unequalled athletic tradition and hopefully another set of magical performances in the next century, who can really doubt, that athletics will retain its position as the national summer sport of Finland? Reference notes and bibliography. Notes: (1) The Olympians, see bib; p50. (2) Guinness Olympic Games Records, see bib, p140. Olympic athletics men's medal tables, include golds awarded up to and counting 1984 Olympics to which since the last three Olympic Games has been added the following number of golds: Finland, one; Britain, one; Russia, eleven; Germany, seven; to give totals as printed. (3) Guinness Track & Field The Records, see bib, p144. (4) Track Stats, Vol 33 No1 1995. Pub: NUTS.(5) Flying Finns, see bib, p64. (6) Progression of World Records, see bib, p145. (7) Finnish Running Secrets, see bib, pp25,26 & 28. (8) The Olympians, see bib; p45. (9) "First four minutes" Bannister, Roger. Pub: Putnam 1955; Bibliography: Athletics in Finland; Jukola, Matti. Pub: Werner Soderstrom Osakeyhtio 1932. Finnish Running Secrets; Hannus, Matti. Pub: World Publications 1973. Flying Finns; Hannus, Matti. Pub: Tietosanoma Oy 1990. Great Moments in Athletics; Webster, F.A.M. Pub: Country Life 1947. Kaikkien Aikojen Yleisurheilutilastot; Jalava, Juhani & Mirko. Pub: Tilastopaja Oy 1993. Lasse Viren Olympic Champion; Raevuori, Antero/Haikkola, Rolf. Pub: Continental 1978. Maineen Tielta 3; Hannus & Raevuori, Matti & Antero. Pub: Lehtikanta Oy Kouvola 1981. Motion - Sport in Finland; Nieminen, Leena. Pub: Finnish Society for Research in Sport & Physical Education, 1992. Olympic Games (The) - Complete Track & field Results: Hugman & Arnold, Barry & Peter. Pub: The Arena Press 1988. Olympians, The; Coe, Sebastian/Mason, Nicholas. Pub: Pavillion 1984.+ in small measure a great many other magazines, books & publications inc. Athletics Today, Athletics Weekly, Guinness Olympic Games Records(1987), Guinness Track & Field The Records(1986), International Running Guide(1984), Progression of World Best Performances & Official IAAF World Records(1987). " 'Flying & Throwing' revised second edition" is published by Chris Turner, 1 Top Farm, Greenway, North Barsham, nr. Walsingham, Norfolk NR22 6AS.(fax 01328 855264) & orginally printed as a booklet by Prontaprint, 15 St. James Street, Kings Lynn, Norfolk PE30 5DA. Copyright - 1996 C.J.Turner.