A general view of the Helsinki Olympic stadium (© Getty Images)
Travelling to Helsinki, Finland this summer for the 10th edition of the IAAF World Championships in Athletics? Good! Bought your airline ticket? Yes? Ah well, you had better make the best of things because in bypassing the option of arriving by sea from one of Finland’s Baltic neighbours you have missed one of the travel experiences of a lifetime.
When approaching Helsinki from across the water on a sunny summer’s morning, whatever your mode of vessel, ferry, cruise-liner or private yacht, the visitor understands why this city, though bereft of canals, is often described as a ‘Venice of the North’. Having sailed through an archipelago of small tree covered islands, on your final approach to the main bay of Helsinki harbour you pass by the imposing Suomenlinna, a large fortress island which once shielded the approaches to the city and is now itself protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Voyage just a few more minutes and you gain your first glimpse of the Finnish capital. With crystal blue sky and water framing the harbour and the sun glinting off the large white dome of the Lutheran Cathedral towering above the shoreline’s facade of the Presidential Palace and other Government residencies, the horizon is on a par with any sea borne vista of the Venetian coast. Throw in the golden cupolas and red brick of the Uspenski Russian Orthodox Cathedral to the port’s right, and you have a sight to savour as you moor.
Immediately there is no doubting Finland’s sporting heritage as across to your left on the opposite quay are the buildings of the ‘Olympic dock’ from where in the 1920’s and 30’s the most powerful Olympic track and field team in the world, aside from the USA, embarked to conquer the world. Here dozens of athletics legends such as Hannes Kolehmainen, Paavo Nurmi, Ville Ritola, Matti Jarvinen… set out to advance Finland’s unofficial foreign policy of sporting conquest, and returned with hordes of medals having run, thrown and jumped their newly independent homeland on to the world stage. On this jetty was born the term ‘The Flying Finns’.
Those days of national triumph are now long gone, yet Finland still ‘punches above its weight’ on the global sporting map. A population of five million Finns continues to add to its long line of World champions whether they are Formula One motor-racing pilots, World Rally drivers, Nordic skiers and jumpers, or even the occasional hard-hitting Ice Hockey line-up.
Most of all, the Finnish population retains a powerful affection for their national summer sport of Track and Field Athletics. Recent global conquerors such as Arsi Harju, 2000 Olympic Shot Put champion, and Aki Parviainen, 1999 World Javelin Throw gold medallist, have a fame in this land which only footballers and pop stars in other European countries can expect. Even ‘The Flying Finns’ have recently returned with Janne Holmen winning the 2002 European Marathon title in Munich. In homage to his victory, postage stamps were issued, and on his arrival home national newspapers and television stations battled for interviews as if he was a Hollywood film star. In Finland, athletics and sport in general really matters!
There is something in the Finnish national consciousness which means individual sports such as Nordic Skiing and Athletics hold an appeal which team games aside from Ice Hockey have never managed to top. Football still has not grabbed the same hold as in the rest of the world.
Finland’s population is mainly concentrated on its small southwestern coastal plain on which Helsinki stands, which means that vast tracts of its 338,145 sq km of territory which is mainly covered by forest and more than 60,000 lakes, remains sparsely inhabited. Finns love this wilderness, an environment where individual resolve, fortitude and reliance are important and much prized characteristics of what it means to be a Finn. The drift to the cities by Western European standards came late to Finland and even present day city dwellers can recount stories of family members of only a generation or two ago who used to walk or run or (in winter) ski to work or school from their village homes.
On the soft pine needle covered tracks of Finland’s forests were born the distance running gods of the pre-war years, and in the tradition’s most recent renaissance in the 1970s, we had modern day athletics divinities such as Juha Väätäinen, Pekka Vasala, Nina Holmen, and of course Lasse Viren.
Helsinki, whose metropolitan area encompasses the smaller towns of Vantaa and Espoo, retains echoes of that former countryside existence. In mood the urban possesses a clean naturalistic air not found in any of the world’s other major capitals. Small woods and parks are plentifully dotted around the city and there are picturesque views of either the sea or landlocked fresh water lakes from many vantage points across town.
The architectural look of the capital is very much ‘east meets west’. Finland, a Cold War buffer zone kept independent from it’s former Russian masters thanks to a constantly shifting policy of neutrality in the second half of the 20th century, has taken the best culturally from both sides of the continent and blended that with its own heritage.
The Nordic classicism of the Parliament building, mixes with the art nouveau of the main railway station which stands juxtaposed in central ‘down-town’ with a neo-classical edifice like the Presidential Palace. Then there are also the clean lined functionalist examples of the Olympic structures built for the 1952 Games, and the modernism of Finlandia Hall.
Helsinki, the northern most national capital on the European continent has a well deserved reputation as an organiser of major international sporting events including the inaugural IAAF World Championships in 1983, the 1952 Olympics, and two celebrations of the European Championships (1971 & 1994), and by hosting the 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics in 2005, the city will add another chapter to its illustrious pedigree.
The present day 40,000 seater Olympic stadium - in its original 1940s guise it held 70,000 - is small by modern standards, and the television channels who will beam coverage of this summer’s championships around the world have bemoaned the lack of working space. But the media’s loss is the spectators’ gain because those coming to watch the action will sit within a few metres of the newly laid Mondo track. The stadium’s steep sides closely wrap the competition area giving an intense, intimate atmosphere which is without equal in the world.
The late IAAF President Dr. Primo Nebiolo reflecting Finland’s great athletics tradition once described the country as a “modern temple to athletics with Helsinki’s Olympic stadium as its high altar”. It is a love affair with the sport which still draws a crowd of 60,000 people (over two days) to attend the Swedish versus Finland match when every other year this last remaining dual athletics fixture takes place in Helsinki.
Finnish athletics fans bring an atmosphere to any big occasion more comparable to a local football derby than that of the sedate athletics fixture known in many countries. Spectators with faces painted in the blue and white of the nation’s colours suspend large Finnish flags on long fishing pole like contraptions, so that their banners fly high over the Olympic stadium’s stands. Horns and whistles are blown noisily, and the crowd cheers raucously at the highs and lows of competition.
No one who was in the Olympic stadium for the 1971 or 1994 European Championships or the 1983 World Championships can ever forget the atmosphere - The ecstasy of a screaming crowd who threw their seat cushions onto the track and let firecrackers off into the dark night sky to announce the 1971 European 10,000m victory of Juha Väätäinen; The tremendous roar which greeted Tiina Lillak’s last throw as she snatched the 1983 World Championship women’s Javelin Throw gold, a feat which simultaneously set the champion off on a high speed lap of honour to the delight of her adoring fans; The wall of sound, enough to officially break the city’s safety limits for noise decibel levels, which accompanied the giant frame of Seppo Räty every time he set foot on the runway during the men’s 1994 European Javelin Throw final.
Yet refreshingly a Finnish crowd is not solely partisan, as a foreign athletics star will be cheered and applauded as will any local name. The Finns are acknowledged worldwide as a most knowledgeable athletics audience.
In an athletics culture as rich and as varied as that of the Finns, legends abound. The Olympic stadium has witnessed 23 ratified World records and over a dozen more have been set at the Eläintarha track some 400m away, which nowadays serves as the warm-up venue.
Yet whatever anyone tells you, one fact connected with the arena and rehashed at the time of each major championship is totally apocryphal. It is true that the clearly lined functionalistic style of the Olympic stadium that Yrjö Lindegren and Toivo Jäntti designed has a distinctive 72 metre tower for which it is rightly famous worldwide. However, please do not believe anyone who tries to convince you that its height was determined by the 72.71m throw with which Matti Järvinen, one of seven Finnish men who have won the Olympic Javelin title, won the 1932 gold in Los Angeles. Sorry but all comparisons between the two, even in this javelin throwing mad land are merely coincidental.
But in Helsinki you never remain disillusioned for too long. The stadium which first showcased the now legendary sprinting and long jumping talents of Carl Lewis to a worldwide audience in 1983 will certainly be the launch pad for more sporting geniuses this summer at the 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics. The legend that is Finnish athletics continues.
Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 2 - 2005
