There is no one in Finland who does not know who Paavo Nurmi is. He is a legendary Finnish middle- and long-distance runner who won 12 athletics medals – the highest number of awards in this discipline in the entire history of the Olympic Games. Paavo Nurmi, who began his career in the 1920s, took part in three Olympic Games and countless international competitions. In the 1990s, “Time” magazine even named him the athlete of the century!
Naturally, the Finns could not help but erect a monument to their famous compatriot. The sculpture is called the “Flying Finn Monument”; this is one of the nicknames that fans and journalists gave him. He was also called the “Phantom,” the “Running Machine,” the “Human Stopwatch,” and even the “Great Silent One” because of the great athlete's extraordinary reserve and few words.
The author of the bronze monument, installed in 1925 in Helsinki, was the Finnish sculptor Väinö Valdemar Aaltonen. The statue is very dynamic; it depicts Nurmi running, and it was placed in front of the Olympic Stadium. A total of three identical sculptures were cast, two of which are in Helsinki and one in Turku, the athlete's hometown. Copies of the monument have also been installed in Lausanne, France, and in the Finnish city of Jyväskylä.
