Two of the world’s top sportspeople are introduced in this instalment of our series on international stars. The Ukrainian gymnast Larissa Latynina was the first female athlete to win as many as nine Olympic golds. The Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi, a “flying Finn,” was considered by many the best middle and long distance runner in the world has ever seen.
Larissa Semyonovna Dirij was born in Ukraine in 1934 and her dream was to become a ballerina. However, her school coach Mikhail Sotnichenko discovered her talent for sports and her artistic aspirations were thus expressed in the gym. At the age of 19, she debuted internationally at the 1954 Rome World Championships, winning the gold medal in the team competition.
At the 1956 Summer Olympics, she competed with Ágnes Keleti of Hungary to become the most successful gymnast of the Olympics. In the event finals, Latynina won four gold medals, a silver medal and a bronze medal.
Latynina also won six medals at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, including 3 gold medals, 2 silver medals and 1 bronze. The last Summer Olympics she competed in was the Tokyo Games in 1964, where she won six medals altogether, two golds, two silvers and two bronzes. She won a total of 16 gold medals, nine silver medals and two bronze medals at World Championships and European Championships during her career. She was also two times world champion and European champion with her team. She retired from competition with a world championship gold medal in 1966.
Latynina became the coach for the Soviet national gymnastics team for many years and currently lives in her estate in Russia, raising animals.
Paavo Nurmi was born in Turku in 1897. He was only 11 when he started running and three years later, he was able run 3,000 metres in ten minutes. His training and preparation for competitions was coached by another “Flying Finn,” who had won three gold medals at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Hannes Kolehmainen. Nurmi’s attention to detail was well demonstrated by the fact that he was always carrying a stop watch both in training and in competition.
Nurmi debuted internationally at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp where he finished as runner-up in the 5,000-metre race. After this, he won two other races and his team also won the gold medal.
A year later, he set a new record for 10,000 metres at a race in Stockholm. In another year, he first broke the record for 2,000 metres and then his coach’s record for 5,000 metres, set in 1912.
At the Paris Olympics in 1924, he won five gold medals, including the 1,500-metre and the 5,000-metre races (with only a rest of 26 minutes between them!).
Four years later, Nurmi won another gold and two silver medals at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam.
Nurmi was unable to compete at the 1932 Summer Olympics because he was branded a professional and barred from running in Los Angeles. (His rehabilitation issued by NOB in 1952 somewhat soothed his disappointment.)
Nurmi was once again “present” at the 1936 Olympics of Berlin where a German jockey, Stubbendorff, competed with a horse named in honour of the Finnish athlete. Stubbendorff won the three-day competition and Nurmi was there in the flesh to cheer his name-sake.
Nurmi lit the Olympic Flame at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. A crowd of 70,000 gave him a standing ovation when the veteran runner entered the stadium and lit the flame. From here, his predecessor Kolehmainen, who had won three gold medals at the 1912 Olympics, took the flame to the Järvinen Tower.
In addition to winning nine Olympic gold medals and three Olympic silver medals, Nurmi set 25 records and ran in around 300 races. After 1919, there were only 15 races that he did not win.
In retirement, the morose sportsman who preferred to hide from the public eye was involved in the construction industry and also in share trading. The first ambulance cars were acquired by Finland with Nurmi’s financial help. He set up a self-named foundation in 1968 to support the treatment of heart and cardiovascular diseases. For his 70th birthday, he agreed to give an interview only because the interviewer was none other than Finland’s president at the time, Urho Kekkonen. Nurmi died in 1973 in Helsinki and was given a state funeral.
