Word: mattis
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...crowd chanted "Matti! Matti!" and his countrymen waved blue-and-white Finnish flags, the superbrat of ski jumping shot down the runway at 54 m.p.h. Body tucked, hands behind his back, he soared off as though someone had slipped a piece of hot charcoal into his ski boot...
...typical Matti Nykanen performance: an explosive takeoff, an eerily long floating descent and -- as of right -- a first-place finish. The boyish Nykanen, 24, punched the air in triumph and seemed to ignore the awed congratulations of Pavel Ploc and Jiri Malec, the Czechs who finished a distant second and third. The decisive win in the 70-meter competition gave Nykanen his first gold at Calgary, with a shot at an unprecedented second and third this week in the weather-delayed 90-meter individual and team events. It also made him the first jumper in some 50 years to finish...
...runs before an anxious crowd of 52,000 onlookers at Canada Olympic Park, Matti "Nukes" produced nearly identical jumps of 294 ft. That gave him an astonishing 17-point margin over Ploc, who scored closer to the tenth-place jumper than he did to Nykanen. It confirmed the suspicion that % there are two classes of jumpers in the world today: Nykanen and everyone else. Said his coach, Matti Pulli: "He is the best jumper in the past 100 years, the best ever in the world." The coach then added matter-of-factly, "Matti was jumping normally today, nothing more than...
...probably the most single-minded and obsessive jumper as well as the best. Nykanen first slid off the roof of his childhood home at 7, got his first skis two years later, and did more jumps at 12 than most of his competitors do now. "When I met him, Matti was making 3,000 to 4,000 jumps a year," said Paavo Komi, a professor who worked with the budding star in his native Jyvaskyla. "Now he jumps nearly 6,000 times each year, in contrast to 3,000 to 4,000 for most jumpers." Part of this...
...Olympics has always been a relative matter of little feelers. Eddie ("the Eagle") Edwards, the ski-jumping plasterer from England, spoke for all the Games' odd fellows when he declared, "To have jumped and still be alive -- it's a thrill." As if Edwards were the grand Finn Matti Nykanen himself, the Brit writers have claimed Eddie as their new knight of the woeful countenance (not to mention feeble eyesight and flapping elbows). What choice did they have? Out at Calgary's quaint hall for curling, the Scots were finishing last in another game they invented. It was pretty exciting...