Word: paavo
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...four-minute mile is an elusive phantom that middle-distance runners have been closely pursuing since Paavo Nurmi set his mark of 4:10.4 in 1923. Some track coaches insist that it is a physical impossibility; others, pointing to the 1945 world record of 4:01.4 set by Sweden's Gunder Haegg, say it will be done eventually. Last week at the Penn Relays, some 40,000 roaring fans at Franklin Field caught a fleeting glimpse of a runner who may be the first to make it a reality. The man: Britain's 22-year-old Roger Bannister...
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...
...work out with him. He entered a few races, proved to be a first-rate pacesetter and gradually became known in Sweden as "Hägg's rabbit." One day, the rabbit turned on the dog; Strand was in front of Hägg at the finish line. Paavo Nurmi exclaimed: "The most outstanding runner I have ever seen...