NURMI, PAAVO (JOHANNES)

born June 13, 1897, Turku, Fin. died Oct. 2, 1973, Helsinki Nurmi, 1931. track athlete who dominated long-distance running in the 1920s, capturing six gold medals in three Olympic Games (1920, 1924, 1928). For eight years (192331) he held the world record for the mile run: 4 min 10.4 sec. Along with numerous other Finns who gained Olympic honours from 1920, Nurmi was inspired by his countryman Hannes Kolehmainen, who won three long-distance races at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. In training and in races, Nurmi carried a stopwatch so that he could precisely regulate his pace. At the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, he won the 10,000-metre run and the 10,000-metre cross-country race; at the 1928 Games, in Amsterdam, he took another gold medal in the 10,000-metre run. Most spectacular were his feats at the 1924 Games in Paris. In little more than one hour on July 10, an extremely hot day, he set Olympic records in the 1,500-metre and 5,000-metre runs. Two days later, again in oppressive heat, he repeated his 1920 triumph in the 10,000-metre cross-country race (an event discontinued after 1924), and the following day he finished first in an unofficial 3,000-metre team race that was won by Finland (no medals were awarded). On Aug. 23, 1923, in Stockholm, Nurmi, consulting his stopwatch as he set his mile record, ran each of the first three quarters (440 yd) in exactly 63 seconds and then the final quarter in 61.4 seconds. Despite his success, his method of evenly paced quarters was not widely imitated. In 1928 he set a world record for the one-hour run: 19,210 m (11 mi 1,648 yd). In 1932, shortly before the Olympic Games, he lost his international amateur status.