The Flying Finns Print, Vintage Atletica Poster, Finlandia Retro Wall Art, Sports Gift, Black and White Sports Print

FLYING FINNS — a LostTeams editorial print telling the existing story of Flying Finns, 1912-1936.

Finland had about three million people. Between 1912 and 1936 it won more Olympic medals in middle and long distance running than any other nation on earth, and it was not close.

The run began with Hannes Kolehmainen at Stockholm in 1912. He won the 5000 metres, the 10000 metres and the cross country, and a country that was still a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire suddenly had a face. The phrase used afterwards, that Kolehmainen had run Finland onto the map of the world, is worn now but it was literally what happened.

Then came Paavo Nurmi, who is the reason the phenomenon has a name that survives.

Nurmi ran with a stopwatch in his hand. He had worked out that the fastest way to cover a distance is to cover it evenly, and he ran to schedule rather than to opponents, checking his lap times and discarding the watch on the final circuit. It looks obvious now. In the 1920s it was close to heresy: races were won by surging, by responding, by racing the man beside you.

At Paris in 1924 he won the 1500 metres and the 5000 metres inside about ninety minutes. He won the cross country in heat that hospitalised much of the field. He won nine Olympic golds in total.

Ville Ritola won five golds at those same Games. The two of them together took most of what was available, and were not friendly about it.

The usual explanation offered at the time was climate and character, the long winters and the silence. That is romantic and mostly wrong. What Finland actually had was a national obsession, a system of local clubs, and a method that treated running as an engineering problem rather than an act of courage.

The run ended the way all such runs end. The rest of the world learned the method.

But for twenty-four years the smallest nation in the field taught the planet how to run a long way.

Hang it. One day someone will ask you what it is, and you will know where to begin.