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 Viestin otsikko: Times. The Finnish Eagle
ViestiLähetetty: 13 Marras 2004, 01:40 
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Liittynyt: 25 Marras 2003, 19:24
Viestit: 4499
Paikkakunta: Kaukajärvi, Tampere
October 28, 2004

The Eagle has landed: the sorry descent of Finland's sporting god
By Owen Slot


WHO are the greatest Finnish sports stars of all time? The man being asked frowns, grins and looks away. He feels uneasy because he is wrapped up in the answer. This is Lasse Viren, he of four Olympic gold medals. “Paavo Nurmi is top,” is his final answer.

“And then?” “This is not easy,” he replies. He pauses. “OK. Matti is there next.” No surname required for Matti Nykänen. Finns have long had two loves: athletics and ski jumping. Nurmi was their greatest athlete. “Matti,” Viren says, “is the best ski jumper of all time.”

Viren, by common consent, is up there too, only he won’t say so. That isn’t his style. He is charming, intelligent and too political. Viren today runs his own charity to help young people in sport and is a member of parliament; Nykänen today is on trial for aggravated assault.

The two knife wounds in the back of a 59-year-old “friend” represented such damning evidence that the question before the court in Tampere, an industrial town two hours north of Helsinki, was not whether he was guilty — Nykänen admitted the offence — but how many years he would serve in prison.

His trial lasted only one day, camera crews waiting in the grey, cold morning to record his arrival, the town’s quiet courts transformed, suddenly staging a national event so widely watched that initial notices were given in English as well as Finnish to accommodate the foreign media.

Nykänen, 41, does not recall anything of the incident or even the knife, which is not altogether surprising given that it provided the climax to one of his infamous drinking sessions at his summer-house in Nokia, a village near Tampere, that lasted so many days that no one knows its exact duration. His wife Mervi, his regular drinking partner, was present, as well as Aarvo Hujanen, who would become his victim.

It was mid-afternoon and they had been watching the Olympics when a game was suggested: sormikoukku, the Finnish equivalent of arm-wrestling, where you link index fingers and the game is to pull your opponent towards you. Nykänen was twice beaten by the older man. He then flew into a sudden rage. That was all it took.

The reaction in Finland has been of overwhelming sadness. More telling is the absence of any surprise.



MATTI PULLI first saw Nykänen jump in 1978, when he was 14. Pulli was 45, so he had seen a lot in his time as a coach, but that is a day he hasn’t forgotten. Nykänen was regularly skipping school to go to the hill in Jyväskylä in central Finland. Pulli could see why. “He jumped four or five times,” Pulli said. “He was perfectly built for a ski jumper. He had already learnt the technique. I said right there that he would be Finland’s next world champion.”

Pulli immediately became Nykänen’s coach. Nykänen, in his youth, approached his sport with an astonishing work ethic and Pulli, in return, was able to reward him with the new theories of aerodynamics that he had been studying. The result was “The Jumping Eagle” and, after four years, Pulli’s prophecy was fulfilled: 1982, Nykänen’s first year as a senior, the World Championships in Oslo, a foggy morning. One for playing safe, one when the young Finn was alone in launching himself into the gloom apparently unhindered by fear.

Over the next eight years, Nykänen would win four Olympic golds and another 14 at World Championships, a record unmatched by any other jumper. The medals are on show in the Helsinki Museum of Sport, which purchased the entire collection when Nykänen put each of them up for sale in order to finance his drinking.

It did not help Nykänen that his was a sport that took courage and machismo to extremes and where drinking was part of the culture. “It’s not that way any more,” Pulli said. “But in those days it was more dangerous — the equipment was so poor, there were more falls. The character of those jumpers was a little different.”

Had he jumped a decade and a half later, Nykänen would have been a euro millionaire. Back then, rewards were limited, the concept of a manager did not exist and those managers whom Nykänen has had since retirement have helped themselves more than they have helped him. So among Nykänen’s income sources, after he quit in 1991, was his work as a stripper in a casino outside Helsinki. His preferred employment was as a nightclub singer; nobody bought his records but, because of the fascination in him, he could guarantee a crowd. His money, though, tended to come from that other sport in which he is unrivalled — tabloid news.

Magazines and newspapers competed for him on their payroll. The stories he has delivered include drink-driving, petty burglary, finding God, losing God, being treated in various clinics for depression and alcohol addiction and his four wives, the last of whom he married, divorced and then remarried atop the ski jump hill in Jyväskylä. “No one else has sold so many newspapers,” Antti-Pekka Pietilä , editor of Ilta-Sanomat, Finland’s biggest-selling daily tabloid, said.


INITIALLY, the Nykänen story industry could induce laddish laughter. Now it us rewarded with a shake of the head. Yesterday in court, the gradual transformation from national deity to sad, morbid spectacle became complete.

There is a strong element of Paul Gascoigne in this, though Finns would argue that the footballer’s achievements as an athlete do not bear comparison. But both struggled with fame, both have records for domestic violence and clinical depression has haunted them, although the heart of the problem for each is their alcohol addiction. “Matti and I are not as close as we used to be,” Pulli said. Emotionally, he is exhausted by the subject. “It is so very sad, but what can you do? We tried many, many ways to help him. We tried the clinics, but whenever he came back he would go drinking again.”

Nykänen’s spiral out of control began its final spin at the start of the year in Germany, when he was promoting Greetings from Hell. The book, an examination not of how far he could jump but how low he could fall, was a self-fulfilling prophecy. All his promotional work had to be booked for 11am, the only time when he could be caught between sobering up and getting drunk again.

Weeks later he was in court for attacking Mervi with a knife while on a trip to Salzburg. Nykänen received a four-month suspended sentence, but his second chances are now all used up. His trial yesterday was second on in Court One.

At 9.30am he appeared in black leather jacket, black sweater and jeans, the excess weight shed by two months in prison. Straight-faced, hands clasped in front of him, he answered questions under his breath as it was put to him that he had acted out of jealousy. Mervi, the court was told, had passed out by the time of the attack, but she was barely dressed and had been flirting with Hujanen.

Nykänen apologised and said that he had never intended to kill Hujanen. His victim then declared that Nykänen was still his friend. Nykänen’s last recollection, he said, was when they switched from beer to vodka. “What has it come to,” he asked the judge rhetorically, “when I am accused of something I cannot remember?”

The judge gave her reply last night. The sentence: two years and two months, of which he will spend at least 12 months in jail before qualifying for parole. The judge had determined that he had not intended to kill his friend and sentenced him for aggravated assault rather than attempted homicide.

The Eagle who once soared so high has fallen like a stone. Maybe, some wonder, only a prison term can rescue him.

_________________
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 Viestin otsikko:
ViestiLähetetty: 13 Marras 2004, 19:28 
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Liittynyt: 06 Tammi 2004, 15:15
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Paikkakunta: Siivikkala, Yvi
Niukalti hauskaa, paljolti asiaa. Sääli nähdä entinen huippu-urheilija noin alas vajonneena, mutta toisaalta on aivan oikein, että laki on kaikille edes lähes sama. Tuomion pituus on ehkä hieman lyhkäinen verraten vastaaviin. Aika näyttää onko sillä mitään vaikutusta. Toivoa sopii, tai muuten epäilen, että Nykäsestä aika jättää ennemmin kuin myöhemmin.

Prosperous landings, Finnish Eagle.


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ViestiLähetetty: 13 Marras 2004, 21:52 
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Liittynyt: 25 Marras 2003, 19:24
Viestit: 4499
Paikkakunta: Kaukajärvi, Tampere
Samaa mieltä edellisen kanssa ja ei tämän hauskaa ollut tarkoitus ollakaan, vaan ihan vapaaseen keskusteluun laitoin kuriositeettina esmerkiksi siitä, miten ulkomailla huomioidaan Suomen tapahtumia. Mielestäni hyvää englanninkieltä.

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ViestiLähetetty: 17 Marras 2004, 02:05 
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Liittynyt: 06 Tammi 2004, 14:44
Viestit: 201
Paikkakunta: Pyynikki
Jeps eihän noita Matin saavutuksia oo kiistäminen. Muistan itekin jännänneeni useeseen otteeseen sen hyppyjä aikoinaan. Teksti oli tosiaan ihan hyvin kirjotettu ja ihan ok kamaa. Mielenkiintonen setti kaiken kaikkiaan. Hyvä postaus Rape!

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