The Good..Bad..and Crazy ..In Finnish Sports.

[sinikettu]

Long feature article in the International Hesa...highlights...What is Finland's worst sporting memory?

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Oh+Noo ... 5233478207
The info about Sweden screwing Paavo Nurmi, so that he could not compete in the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, I had not heard before.

There are now new additions..

Last week Ski star, Kaisa Varis, was suspected of doping violation..Having already been caught once before. She tried again and seems to have been caught again.

Today papers show pictures of Ice Hockey player, Jere Karalahti sitting in court, with the news that he looks to be heading to prison for a long time (6 years) for drug offences.

What about some good news and/or memories..??
Other than of course when Finland beat Sweden at Globen.

[simon]

how about failing to qualify for the Euro's this time around by dropping stupid points to the minows of armenia......and on

[sinikettu]

What about some good news and/or memories..??
Other than of course when Finland beat Sweden at Globen.

Having given it some thought ..My favorite was being woken up early on a Sunday Morning to the shouts of "Mikä voitti!"...from under my bedroom Window...Mikä Häkkinen had just won the Japanese GP and also the world championship....I had foolishly made a bet the night before in the pub.."If Häkkinen wins the beer is on me!"... My protest that it was early Sunday morning, was to no avail..the local Myyrmäki pubs were already open at 9 AM.
In Myyrmäki it was really local hero stuff..He went to school just around the corner,...his sister still lives in the area.
He is often revisting his old haunts.
I saw him shopping with wife and his two kids a few weeks ago...almost just like a normal family...Little Hugo looks to be a hand full..Dad had to drag him away from shopping centre fountain, where he had decided to swim.

[sinikettu]

This has to come under the heading of Crazy and Bad...
Today Int Hesa reports Match Fixing in youth (under 19s) Salibandy...
Finland V Russia.
..The Ref cried after the match as he could not influence the cheating that took place...

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Sweden ... 5233644451

[otyikondo]

This has to come under the heading of Crazy and Bad...
Today Int Hesa reports Match Fixing in youth (under 19s) Salibandy...
Finland V Russia.
..The Ref cried after the match as he could not influence the cheating that took place...

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Sweden ... 5233644451

Yes, but as the article points out, the Finns were hardly the guilty party in all this. And it happens all the time to a greater or lesser extent. Look at the last matches of the group stages of the ECL. Teams that have already qualified and won their group - or know that they CANNOT win their group but have qualified anyway - will put out a team of reserves or those Finnish players who otherwise never get a game. It's like a dead rubber in a Davis Cup match. The big problem with the Finnish-rules baseball match-fixing scam was just this: end-of-season games that had no significance either way for the teams involved. Very tempting.

And if you want one, there was a FAR more egregious example of this kind of "match-fixing" - though it is hardly match-fixing as I understand it (taking a fall for big bucks) - at the Germany vs. Austria game in the opening round of the 1982 World Cup finals in Spain. But you'd need an Algerian fan to tell you all about that little bit of Teutonic malarkey. Should have kicked them both out of the tournament and banned them for four years.

[Hank W.]

The info about Sweden screwing Paavo Nurmi, so that he could not compete in the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, I had not heard before.

Well *everybody* knows that... mutta ei saa kaivaa vanhoja tikulla silmästä

I'm more upset over the 5-6 loss to Sweden... what was the first round 3-0?

[sammy]

I've got to confess something. Watching sports (in any form; soccer, ice-hockey, dwarf-tossing, you name it) is not merely a closed book for me. I don't even know the way to the library where this closed book is kept. Thus, just about anyone can beat me in Trivial Pursuit - I'll never ever get that orange sports question correct, except perhaps by sheer monstrous luck. There are squirrels out there in the (at the moment, beautifully snowy) Helsinki forests that are more knowledgeable than me in issues regarding sports. Perhaps in many other issues as well, but that's beside the point.

When I was a child I did occasionally watch the cross-country skiing shown on the telly - back in the days of Helena Takalo et al. So one of the few catastrophic flashbulb memories is the moment included in the original list - ie Mieto vs Wassberg, with the latter gaining his famous 0.01 second victory.

You can listen to the original commentators' moment of utter despair on the YLE sound archives.

Ouch.

Typically, however, I did not have a faintest clue as to which competition and what year exactly this was. Had to look it up.

[Mattlill2000]

Jere Karalahti

[Kezmale]

I have to say that the ice-hockey match against Sweden that ended up 6 -5 for them is definitely the utter worst event in Finnish sports. I remember watching it up till 5 - 4, then turning the TV off in the hopes of "not giving the team bad luck by watching the game", didn't work Had to recall the events from the Sweden - Belarus (4 - 5) match one year prior to get over the 6 - 5 loss

Anyone remember the F1 race when Häkkinen's car smashed on the last lap? He had to pull over ~500m from the finish line When Häkkinen in 1998 started to manage against the top drivers, I remember always being most worried about whether or not his car can make it to the finish line

YLE showed a clip yesterday in "Urheiluruutu" in their segment called "Muistatko vielä" (do you still remember) where a Finnish guy (name anyone?) broke the record of 5meters (5m 10cm) in polevault as the first person in the world. Must have been quite the atmosphere in the audience.

[otyikondo]

Pentti Nikula, February 1963, and it was indoors, in Pajulahti. The jumping pit is still there, or was a few years back. He jumped 5 metres, 5.05, and 5.10 in the space of one afternoon.

Apropos the Häkkinen case, at least according to one rather dogmatic fellow writing in Wikipedia, it doesn't count, because:

Tosin autourheilu, kuten Formulat, eivät ole oikeata urheilua, vaan yksinkertaisille ihmisille suunnattua koneilla radan ympäriajamista.

(Finnish Wikipedia - "Urheilu")

OUCH!