ATHLETES AS ASSETS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17527, 2 May 1925, Page 9

ATHLETES AS ASSETS.

: I I CHAMPIONS ADVERTISE THEIR COUNTRIES. | When Paavo Nurmi, the runner j from Finland, left all other nations standing at the Olympic Games, he made a good many of us think more ! about h:s native land than ever we ; had done before, declares the “ Daily i Telegraph.” Finland was not precisely 1 an unknown country, but, after, all, the fame of an athlete is something greater . ; than that of ancient poetry or modem ; science. A record on the track has fa: ; higher value than an epic or a treatise; more people understand what it means. • | Acknowledging all this, like sportsmen, ; i we must still declare a little surprise at I the last news from America. The i prowess of Paavo Nurmi, we are assured, has so charmed the United States i that the bankers of New York remark j a great improvement in the credit of ! Finland. To those who feel that this i is even a darker mystery than most of the phenomena of high finance we offer j the official explanation that the running of Xurim has compelled an increase of interest in the other products of Finland. Americans, always idealists, buy the Finnish mark because Nurmi runs faster than they do, because that must be a country of great resources where such a runner is bred. Perhaps this is not quite so fantastic as it sounds. Long ago the Greeks held that a lad who won his race at Olympia deserved | well of his country. They brought him j home in purple behind four white horses and gave him a dinner for which the fashionable poet composed a I choric ode. If our fifteen had known j that sort of thing was coming we } might have beaten the New Zealanders. Some States in ancient Greece made more fuss still. Any Athenian lad who won an Olympic crown had a place in tlie committee seats at all public games and beard and lodging at the expense of the State for the term of his natural life. We shall do the Athenians no injustice if we remark that this was not sportsmanship but business. An Olympic winner, they held, was the best national ment, and the more they could turns cut the bitter for the Treasury. Even so do the bankers pronounce that Paavo Nurmi is a bull point for Finland’s finai.ee. Perhaps Mr Winston Churchill might make something of the hint. But cheie are so few games which the Americans and wc both play. Perhaps it is best so. If success in international sport was necessary to national finance the pound would not stand where it does.