Word: nurmi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
TRACK: Jesse Owens (201), Jim Thorpe (74), Paavo Nurmi...
Helsinki's non-Communist press last week welcomed back "the Paavo Nurmi of Finnish politics." Red newspapers damned the release of Tanner (whom they called "worse than Laval and Quisling"), and threatened "dire consequences." With a cautious eye on the Kremlin, bull-necked Premier Karl August Fagerholm, Tanner's most ardent disciple, did not immediately invite the old fire-eater back into the government. Tanner declared that he would retire to his farm near Helsinki, "to write books and raise forests." Before he left Helsinki, he had one more political pronouncement. "I am proud of the Socialist Party...
...Finns thought they had the race to themselves, as they usually have (the great Paavo Nurmi won it twice). For the first few laps last week, it looked as if they were right. Nurmi's protégé, lanky Viljo Heino, set the pace, with a fellow Finn, Heinstrom, padding at his heels. Like a patient English housewife in a fish-market queue, Zatopek stayed politely back in about tenth or twelfth place. On the tenth lap, "he picked up speed, pounded past Viljo Heino and took the lead. At about the halfway mark Zatopek began lapping...
Better Than Nurmi. The second of the Finns, bothered by the heat, the humidity and the pace, gave up on the 22nd lap, with three laps to go, and had to be helped off the track. Zatopek himself was grabbing at the right side of his trunks, in obvious pain (he said later that it was a stomach-ache). The crowd of 60,000 cheered him all the way around the track, as he increased his speed, crossed the finish line 19.2 seconds ahead of the great Nurmi's best Olympic time. Zatopek's time: a record...
There again, his athletes distinguished themselves by placing second in the track and field tests, this time with a total of 166 points. Paave Nurmi, just beginning to dominate the headlines, paced the Finns by obliterating Olympic records in the 1500 and 5000 meters. Following this success, Jaakko was married at the Finnish Legation at Paris and subsequently returned to Harvard as cross country coach and assistant track coach...