By
Crikey’s Finland correspondent,
Therese Catanzariti

The
first week of August is usually the nicest time of year in Finland and
is usually made of sunny warm days. Not this year. It’s been
thunderstorms and rain bucketing down. Which is a real shame because
Helsinki has been hosting the world athletics championships.

That
hasn’t stopped the Finnish spectators. The stadium has been sold out.
Finland has the largest number of Olympic medals per capita. Sure,
there’s a significant whack of cross-country skiing, ski-jumping and
ice hockey winter olympics medals in there. But the Finns have 114
Olympic medals in athletics, including 49 gold. The Finns are athletics
nuts.

The Finnish legends are the long distance runners, the
Flying Finns. The master is Paavo Nurmi. He held 25 world records and
won nine olympic gold and three silver over three games – Antwerp
(1920), Paris (1924) and Amsterdam (1928). At his peak he ran all
distances from 1500 metres to the marathon – including gold in the 1,500
metres and 5,000 metres in the same afternoon in Paris, with barely an
hour between to recover. And then there’s Lassi Viren. In Munich 1972,
Viren fell over in the middle of the 10,000 metres. Then got up and won
the race. He won gold in the 10,000 metres, then gold in the 5,000 four
days later, and then came fifth in the marathon the next day. He
defended his title in Montreal 1976, winning gold in the 5,000 metres
and 10,000 metres. Like Seb Coe, Lasse Viren is now a conservative
member of government.

The Inuit have fifteen words for snow.
The Finns have a particular word for stamina, determination and
willpower. The type of stamina, determination and willpower to thrive
in -30C, darkness and long winters. The type of stamina, determination
and willpower to excel in long distance running. Sisu.

And there’s more about the Finns – and the world athletics championships, as seen from the drinks station – on the site here.