FAMOUS RUNNER.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 27 November 1935, Page 2

FAMOUS RUNNER.

MEMORIES OF NURMI. It seems strange to think that many an international runner of to-day never saw Nurmi run. At the age of 3S, he announces his retirement, but in fact he had retired from world athletics early in 1932, when there was some trouble about expenses on an American tour and the International Amateur Athletic Federation suspended him writes "E.A.M.,” in the Manchester Guardian. England last saw him in May, 1931, when he attempted to make a new world’s record for four miles at Stamford Bridge. He was right out of form, and those who saw him for the first time that day can have had no notion of his greatness.

How good was he at his best? Was he the greatest runner of all time? He still holds nine world’s records and has held others from a mile to ten miles. He ran, in ten Olympic races in 1920, 1921. and 1925, won .seven of them, and was second in the other three. But records can be utterly misleading; they depend on how hard the winner's apponents were able to drive him. It may well be that W. G. George, running in solitary splendour forty years earlier, was as great a runner as Nurmi, and that Alfred Shrubb was little behind them. And it is likely that Jesse Owens, the young American negro who is busy breaking sprint and long jump records, will soon dominate the present generation of athletes as Nurmi dominated the last one. Paris Olympic Games. The extent of Nurmi’s dominance can only be fully realised by those of us who were running in his hey-day. He reduced the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris to a farce, a series of exhibition races; the thing became almost amusingly monotonous. In race after race Nurmi would reel off lap after lap, never varying his pace or stride by a fraction, drawing inexorably farther and farther away. He would win by the length of a street, and a blue and white flag would go fluttering up the flagstaff and every body would stand to attention while the band played the Finnish national anthem. Everybody, that is to say, except Nurmi, for Nurmi would not be there. He did not stop when he had broken the tape; he ran straight to where his clothes were lying on the grass, picked them up, and ran on into the dressing-room. And that was the last that was seen of him until the next massacre was due to take place.

In those games be won the 1500 metres, 5000 metres, 3000 metres team race, and 10,000 metres cross-country race. He made new Olympic records for the first three distances, at which he already held the world’s records. But his most marvellous achievement was in the cross-country race. It was run on a day' of such intense heat that of 42 starters less than a dozen finished. The rest were picked up unconscious all along the course, and the ambul ances were out for hours afterwards. Yet Nurmi, a native of a cold country, finished completely' fresh more than a quarter of a mile in front of the man who held the world’s track record for the distance. The next day he won the 3000 metres teams race and made a new Olympic record. Running to Schedule. The thing which disheartened his opponents more than anything else was his icy self-containment. He ran, as everybody knows, to a strict timeschedule, carrying a watch in his hand and looked at it after every lap. He paid no attention to his opponents before, during, or after the race! he never spoke and he never smiled. The sheer inhumanity of the man broke the hearts of those who had to run against him.

Only twice did I ever see him take any notice of anybody else. One occasion was a heat of the 5000 metres Which ho was winning comfortably; fourth place would have been good enough, but he did not know that fourth places existed. A hundred yards from the finish an almost exhausted Frenchman, knowing that he would finish nowhere in the final, thought to gain a moment’s fleeting glory by beating the champion in a heat. He struggled up to Nurmi’s shoulder and the Paris crowd went mad. Nurmi turned his head, saw what was happening, ami shot away as though he had been slang. The gesture said, “Confound your impudence!” more plainly than any words.

The other occasion was in the final of the same race, when he was beating W. Ritola, the other Finn, who was only less great than himself. Ritola had lived for years and learnt his running in the United States, and he and Nurmi had never met before these games. There was intense rivalry between them, and it was said that the Finnish selectors kept them in different races except team races' so that they should not race each other to death. Nurmi wa s given the 1500 metres, Ritola the 10,000 metros (in which he boat the world’s record). But in the 5000 metres they met, and Nurmi ran the last hundred yards of it with his chin on his shoulder, looking at Ritola, who was struggling desperately a few yards behind.