August 12 1924
The achievements of the Finns were the real sensation of this year’s Olympics.
Paavo Nurmi won four first places this year, and broke two Olympic records the same day when he ran a 1,500 metre and 5,000 metre race within the span of three hours.
What makes the Finns win? What ethnological heritage have these 3,500,000 people who live within or near the Article Circle?
What enables them to produce long-distance runners with an endurance and speed that drive the world’s best to exhaustion? What traditions of cross-country running have been handed down the centuries from the runners of Finnish mythology?
These are some of the mysteries that lead out of the amazing athletic achievements of the Finns at the Colombes field.
And the riddles are not solved by evidence from historians, anthropologists and compilers of vital statistics.
One of the first explanations to go by the board is that which attributed the Finns’ brilliant athletic qualities to Nordic stock.
Despite their Baltic home, Western civilisation and European customs, the Finns’ basic ancestors were Orientals. They were of the same wild Mongol strain that penetrated southern Europe, and are seen in the Magyar and Turk. Traces of their origin may be seen in the resemblance of the Finnish to the Magyar language.
Not of the same stock as their hardy Scandinavian neighbours, the Mongol origin of the Finns gives no explanation for their endurance as distance runners. They have handed down no tradition of this sort in centuries past.
It is true that among the Turks there are strange tales of runners employed by the great Sultans, and one legendary character is credited with having run from Constantinople to Adrianople (129 miles) in 24 hours, but stories of none of these feats appear in the early epic poems of Finland.
According to Dr Clark Wissler, head of the American Museum of Natural History, there is nothing in the background of the Finn to indicate that he is a distance runner of great endurance.
“Of course,” he said, “with different peoples there are varying elements in physique. The English, for instance, have been for centuries a handy people with their fists, but the past of the Finns does not indicate that they are possessed of superior endurance as runners; it does not show that foot racing is one of their innate traits.”
