VIREN, LASSE

born July 22, 1949, Myrskal, Finland Finnish distance runner and the first athlete to win gold medals for both the 5,000- and 10,000-metre races in consecutive Olympic Games: at Munich in 1972 and at Montreal in 1976. Virn began running as a youth. At the age of 19 he dropped out of school to train under Rolf Haikkola, a follower of the New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard, who stressed building up endurance by running very long distances. While winning the gold medals at the 1972 Games in Munich, Virn set a world record for the 10,000-metre race of 27 min 38.4 sec. He had also set a world record for the 5,000-metre race in 1972 of 13 min 16.4 sec.