Background

Paavo Nurmi was born on June 13, 1897 in Turku, Grand Duchy of Finland, Russian Empire (present-day territory of Finland). He was the first-born of Johan Fredrik Nurmi, a woodworker, and Matilda Wilhelmiina Nurmi. Paavo had three sisters, Siiri, Saara, Lahja, and one brother, Martti.

Education

Paavo Nurmi's family moved to the central district of Turku when he was six. The boy was fascinated by running since childhood and began running through the Finnish forests when he was nine. A long-distance runner Alfred Shrubb of the United Kingdom was among the athletes who inspired Paavo and his friends. By the age of eleven, Paavo could overcome the distance of 1500 meters in 5 minutes and 2 seconds.

After the death of his father and sister Lahja, Paavo Nurmi, the eldest child, was forced to forsake school and support the family by working on the docks and as a filer in an engineering shop. By the time of involuntary school leaving, he had an average of 9.38 out of a possible 10. Nurmi was obliged to cease his running training, but kept himself fit through some physical exercises.

Nurmi's passion in athletics was revived by an unbelievable performance of a Finnish runner, Hannes Kolehmainen, who earned three gold medals in the long-distance event at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. 15-year-old Nurmi soon bought his first real pair of running shoes and resumed training.

Nurmi adopted a systematic approach to training, being one of the first athletes ever to do so. A self-educated, he trained with a stopwatch to measure pace and time, or to cross-train by combining running, walking, and calisthenics. He ran most of the race at an even pace contrary to other runners of the time who kept a slow pace around the track, conserving their strength until the last lap when they sprinted to the finish.

In 1914, Nurmi joined Turun Urheiluliitto, a Turku sports club that he would represent throughout his career. His training paid off on May 29 as he set his first national record by running 3000 meters in 8 minutes and 36.2 seconds. Nurmi continued to support his family working at the Ab. H. Ahlberg & Co workshop in Turku.

Career

The start of Paavo Nurmi's career can be counted from April 1919 when he began his military service at a machine gun company in the Pori Brigade. As the Olympic Games of 1916 were officially canceled because of World War I, Nurmi entered the competition four years later, in Antwerp, Belgium. In the 5,000 meters, his first race, he was defeated by Joseph Guillemot of France. It would be the only loss to a foreigner in an Olympic final during his entire career. He won gold medals in the 10,000 meters and the individual and team cross-country events, and a silver medal in the 5,000 meters.

The victories and records followed. On June 22, 1921, Nurmi set his first world record by making the 10,000 meters in 30 minutes, 40.2 seconds. He then refreshed world records in distances ranging from 1,500 meters to 10,000 meters racing with his stopwatch in hand, adhering to a rigid schedule he had planned beforehand. By 1923, Nurmi turned to be a record holder for the mile, the 5,000-meter and the 10,000-meter races, the things, that have never been done before or since.

The next Summer Olympics held in Paris in 1924 was a triumph for Paavo Nurmi as he won five gold medals in six days. He excelled in the 1,500 and the 5,000-meter races, the cross-country race (as an individual and in the team competition), and the 3,000-meter team race. In the 5,000 meters, he easily passed his rivals, Ville Ritola of Finland and Edvin Wide of Sweden. Such a successful athlete, he was banned from running in the 10,000 meters by Finnish authorities as they planned to give Ritola a possibility to earn the gold. Nurmi ran alone recording his time with a stopwatch and surpassed the official gold result.

The following year, Paavo Nurmi went on a tour of the United States. Competing primarily on indoor tracks, he won 53 of 55 races, loosing once and withdrawing from the race once. Nurmi's productivity gradually declined after the competition as he began winning by shorter margins and he never improved his three previous world records, in the 1,500, 5,000, and 10,000-meter races. The decline didn't prevent the track athlete from taking part in his third Olympics, held in Amsterdam in 1928. Nurmi won a gold medal in the 10,000 meters and took silver in the 5,000 meters and the 3,000 meters.

That same Olympic year, Nurmi spoke in one of his interviews about his intention to retire from the sport. However, he continued to run and participated in the 1929 American tour. By the next year, the athlete set world records in six miles and in 20 kilometers.

Nurmi was barred from the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles under the pretext of being no longer an amateur as he had been paid travel expenses for a tour through Germany in 1925. By the then rule, the athletes who earned money from their sport had no right to participate in the Olympics. The Flying Finn went to Los Angeles anyway and kept training.

The rule was applied to all international amateur events. Nurmi triumphed in his last international competition in Konigsberg, Germany, where he won the 5,000-meter race on October 4, 1931. After that, he participated only in inner Finnish events that cemented him a status of the "national amateur." His last race in Viipuri, Finland, on September 16, 1934, ended up with his victory in the 10,000 meters.

After retiring from the sport, Paavo Nurmi launched a career of a businessman and building contractor. He increased the capital that he had saved since the 1920s through house building. Nurmi also tried his hand at coaching, training several Finnish runners. At the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Nurmi was honored to bring the torch into the stadium to light the Olympic flame for the Games.

Achievements

• 

  One of the best long-distance runners all over the world, Paavo Nurmi was and remains a national hero for the people of Finland. His major contribution to athletics is the elaboration of "even pace" strategy and the application of the analytic method to running. He is also appreciated for his systematic all-year-round training program consisting of long-distance work and interval running. Such forthcoming running stars as Emil Zátopek, Lasse Virén, and Hicham El Guerrouj credited their own achievements to Nurmi.
  
  At the pinnacle of his athletic career, Nurmi won 121 races at the distances ranging from 800 m. He went undefeated in cross country events and the 10,000 m over 14 years that he was in sport. The Flying Finn authored 25 official world records in distances between 1500 m and 20 km and that was a record number for running. Besides, he had 58 unofficial records to his credit, including indoor ones. This kind of records remained unratified by the International Association of Athletics Federations until the 1980s.
  
  Nurmi's record for most gold medals at Olympic Games was later repeated by gymnast Larisa Latynina, swimmer Mark Spitz, and track and field athlete Carl Lewis. Nowadays, the record is second only to a swimmer Michael Phelps. Nurmi's record for most medals in the Olympics was beaten by Edoardo Mangiarotti in 1960. Paavo Nurmi was named the greatest Olympian ever in 1996 by Times magazine and was inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame in 2012.
  
  Nurmi was given a state funeral with full honors. Since his death, statues of the legendary track athlete have been erected all over Finland and at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Switzerland. There are Paavo Nurmi Games held in Finland since 1957 and the Paavo Nurmi Marathon in Wisconsin. In 1997, a historic stadium in the athlete's native Turku was renamed the Paavo Nurmi Stadium.
  
  Medals and stamps have been issued in his honor and an asteroid was named after him in 1939. Nurmi was depicted on the national currency - the 10 markkaa banknote - from 1986 until 2002, when Finland adopted the euro.

Religion

Nurmi's family was religious, and he had to attend church frequently as a child, though he did not like the experience much.

Politics

Paavo Nurmi stayed away from politics during the Finnish Civil War in 1918 preferring to focus on his Olympic goals. Upon the end of the conflict, he denied the membership at the newly established Finnish Workers' Sports Federation but contributed articles to the federation's head office in which he condemned the discrimination of his fellow colleagues and athletes. Later, when Finland was threatened by the Soviet Union during the Second World War, Nurmi went to the United States to support the Finnish cause.

Views

Paavo Nurmi donated his hard-earned money to establish a foundation to study coronary thrombosis in 1968, providing buildings for the researchers to do their work and a large sum of money.

Quotations: "Mind is everything. Muscle – pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind."

"If you want to tell something to an athlete, say it quickly and give no alternatives. This is a game of winning and losing. It is senseless to explain and explain."

"The athlete must make a devotion of his specialty."

"I ran for myself, not Finland."

Personality

Paavo Nurmi was a highly disciplined person throughout his entire life. He always strictly followed his own principle for an athlete, which consisted of being devoted to the specialty. He critically analyzed his daily training schedule, combined long, slow runs and long walks.

Such an obsession with running made others think that he hadn't any personality at all. Nurmi seemed to be a remote, cold, and inhuman running machine. He didn't like publicity and interviews, stayed remote from fellow athletes. The inward intensity of the track athlete was a part of his personality, but was also determined by the fact that he was determined to set records that would never be broken.

Physical Characteristics: Paavo Nurmi was 1.74 meters tall. He had an attack of coronary thrombosis in the late 1950s and in 1967.

Quotes from others about the person

• Cordner Nelson, publisher and writer: "His imprint on the track world was greater than any man's before or after. He, more than any man, raised track to the glory of a major sport in the eyes of international fans, and they honored him as one of the truly great athletes of all sports."
  
  Roberto L. Quercetani, journalist: "In later years Nurmi supplied a critical analysis of his training methods. His daily schedule, more than adequate to the needs of his time, consisted for the most part in long and relatively slow runs, usually preceded by equally long walks."
  
  Roberto L. Quercetani, journalist: "If compared with the often oppressive training methods of present-day runners, Nurmi's onetime ration naturally seems insufficient, notably as regards quality. In his own admission, speed work really entered his mind only in the later years of his career. Although he had the great merit of perceiving the importance of even pace-running, it may be argued that by this constant thought he obviously limited himself and probably left his potential untapped. Seen in their proper historical perspective, however, Nurmi's feats can only be described as fantastic."
  
  Gabriel Hanot, footballer and journalist: "Paavo Nurmi lives beyond humanity. He is ever more serious, reserved, concentrated, pessimistic, fanatic. There is such coldness in him and his self-control is so great that never for a moment does he show his feelings. […] What is Paavo Nurmi's mentality? Why does he seem to lack human qualities? Is he a slave of sport, of training, of records, in such degree that he sacrifices his body and soul with no thought, regard or free moment spared for the outside world?"
  
  Ron Clarke, athlete and writer: "It is quite hard in most instances to fix a label on an athlete – to say that a certain image is constantly true to the performer's character. But for Paavo Nurmi it is easy – both the legends and the known facts of this greatest of all athletes show a strong, silent, hard and confident individual. We have put a great deal of time into research upon the 'Phantom Finn' – to attempt to separate the fantasies from the fact. But the man was capable of so many incredible feats, and seemed not to discourage the many legends (certainly, even now, he makes no attempt to confirm or deny) that the 'image' becomes the man. His name, Paavo Nurmi, was known to the whole world. [...] He was enigmatic, sphinx-like, a god in a cloud. It was as if he was all the time playing a role in a drama. Yet, often the man seemed true to the legends which were woven around him. Perhaps, even, he encouraged them. No one knew… How was it that Paavo Nurmi stood apart, stern and silent, with uncompromising self-discipline, with white-hot ambition, bearing the closest resemblance, in athletics, to Napoleon Bonaparte?"
  
  Joe Brady: "Nurmi was an introvert. To many observers he seemed bleak and remote, interested only in his running."
  
  Martti Jukola, Finnish journalist: "There was something inhumanly stern and cruel about him but he conquered the world by pure means: with a will that had supernatural power."

Interests

• Finnish sports massage, sauna-bathing traditions

• Athletes

  Alfred Shrubb, Hannes Kolehmainen

Connections

Paavo Nurmi married a socialite Sylvi Laaksonen in 1932. The family produced one son, Matti. Paavo expected his scion to become a runner and did his best to make the dream come true. Silvy didn't share such aspirations and eventually filed for divorce which was finalized in 1935.

Matti did follow in his notable dad's footsteps and became a middle-distance runner, though he later shifted to business. The relationship between Paavo and his son wasn't easy. Matti paid more attention to his father as a businessman rather than an athlete. They never touched the topic of Matti's athletic career as well.

Father:

Johan Fredrik Nurmi

(born February 10, 1860 – died January 30, 1910)

Mother:

Matilda Wilhelmiina Nurmi

(née Laine; February 23, 1872 – died June 3, 1934)

Sister:

Siiri Vilhelmina Nurmi

(born October 19, 1899 – died January 25, 1972)

Sister:

Saara Matilda Nurmi

(born 1902 – died 1971)

Sister:

Saaka Lahja Nurmi

(born 1908 – died 1911)

Brother:

Martti Nikolai Nurmi

(born December 19, 1905 – died September 9, 1979)

ex-wife:

Sylvi Nurmi

(née Laaksonen; born 1907 – died 1968)

Son:

Matti Nurmi

Matti Nurmi showed his best score as a runner in the 3000 meters where he repeated his dad's time. On July 11, 1957, in 1500 meters, Matti was 2.2 seconds away from his father's world record of 1924.

References

• The Kings of Distance: A Study of Five Great Runners A book by Peter Lovesey.
  1968
• Official Website of Paavo Nurmi