Athletics legends gather in Paris (© James Rhodes)
A rare gathering of 24 Olympic and world champions and world record-holders assembled at the Monnaie de Paris on Tuesday (6) to celebrate the centenary of Paavo Nurmi’s triumph at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.
Nurmi, known as the “Flying Finn”, won a record five Olympic gold medals in distance events at the 1924 Games, a feat that has yet to be equalled in the 23 editions of the Olympic Games held since.
As a celebration of his stunning achievement, World Athletics has worked with the Nurmi family to display his five gold medals at the Museum of the Monnaie de Paris, the world’s oldest mint, from March to November this year.
The Museum of World Athletics (MOWA) Gathering of Champions included Olympic 1500m and 5000m champion Hicham El Guerrouj, Olympic 400m hurdles champions Nawal El Moutawakel and Kevin Young, Olympic heptathlon champion and World Athletics Council member Nataliya Dobrynska, Olympic sprint hurdles champions Aries Merritt and Joanna Hayes, former world mile and 1500m record-holder Filbert Bayi, Olympic 10,000m champion Billy Mills and the President of World Athletics, Sebastian Coe, the 1980 and 1984 Olympic 1500m champion.
Both Bayi and Mills took the opportunity to donate items of memorabilia to the Museum of World Athletics collection.
Filbert Bayi presents his singlet to Sebastian Coe in Paris (© James Rhodes)
Bayi, from Tanzania, donated the singlet and shorts he wore to break both the 1500m world record at the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch in 1974 and the mile record a year later, as well as a copy of his autobiography Catch Me If You Can.
Mills, a First Nations athlete, contributed his USA tracksuit from the 1964 Olympic Games.
The US athlete was due to be MOWA’s guest of honour at a function planned for the Tokyo Olympic Games, giving him the opportunity to return to the scene of his greatest athletics triumph, but the Covid pandemic intervened and normal social functions were cancelled.
Three years later, he has travelled to Paris with his family to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his gold medal run.
Billy Mills donates his USA tracksuit from the 1964 Olympics to Sebastian Coe for the MOWA (© James Rhodes)
Coe told the assembled dignitaries and guests that the celebration had been scheduled to coincide with the timing of the Olympic men's 1500m final, one of the five events that Nurmi won in Paris 100 years before.
“Paavo Nurmi was sport’s first and No.1 global superstar and his fame was turbo-charged in the United States (by an extensive post-Olympic running tour), and clearly the bedrock of that was the five gold medals and those extraordinary achievements,” Coe said.
“There’s nothing that touches the extraordinary performances of this guy, and when it came to the United States, if you knew Charlie Chaplin, if you knew Douglas Fairbanks, if you knew Mary Pickford, you certainly knew Paavo Nurmi.
“His five medals in Paris are still the biggest medal grab of any track and field athletes at an Olympic Games. His pioneering approach to coaching was also extraordinary, introducing a subtle blend of speed, endurance, conditioning, distance and interval – fartlek as it was introduced at the time. And he has three statues, one outside the Olympic stadium in Helsinki, one outside the Olympic Museum in Lausanne and the other, of course, in his hometown in Turku.
“He stands alongside any greats in any assessment in any era, whether it’s Jesse Owens, Fanny Blankers-Koen, Emil Zatopek, Carl Lewis, Usain Bolt – he is one of the all-time greats.”
Coe thanked those assembled, including the Nurmi family, “for honouring our history, it really matters.”
“Unless you respect your history, you have no idea about how to navigate the vicissitudes of the future, and that’s why all of you have demonstrated that our past is really important,” he said.
Coe particularly thanked benefactor Michael Burke for his generosity in supporting the Museum of World Athletics.
Nicole Jeffery for World Athletics Heritage
