Flying Finn?During the 1924 Paris Olympics, Paavo Nurmi ("The Flying Finn") ran seven races in six days - one of which struck many as particularly remarkable. Having won a 500-meter sprint, Nurmi won the 5,000-meter event just seventy-five minutes thereafter.
Later the same night, several of Nurmi's friends (including Adrian Pavlen, a former Olympic long-distance runner and IAAF president) took a bus from the Olympic village in Colombes to a party in Paris, a distance of some six miles. "We looked out the window," Pavlen later recalled, "and there was Nurmi... walking to Paris!"
[In his later years - though suffering from heart disease, partial paralysis on his left side, partial blindness, and cerebral thromboses - Nurmi walked eight miles every day.]
Nurmi, Paavo ["The Flying Finn"] (1897-1973) Finnish athlete and Olympic runner
[Sources: C. Fadiman, ed., Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes]More Paavo Nurmi anecdotesRelated Anecdote Keywords:
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