This weekend it is Sweden’s turn to host Finland for the rather extraordinary and, indeed, unique athletics dual match the history of which goes back one hundred years.
In honor of the meet’s 100th anniversary, I carried out a minor research project on one of the event’s best-known and, on the face of it, most controversial races. Two athletes, one from each country, were disqualified in the men’s 5000m race in 1975, a race that drove the packed Stockholm Olympic Stadium wild (to put it mildly).
There was pushing, serious elbowing, lots of zigzag running, and on the penultimate lap when the fastest of the lot finally took off, he waved goodbye to his Swedish opponent and flashed a victory sign to the roaring back straight stand.
The happy-go-lucky Finn went on to win the race – only to be disqualified for excessive elbowing. The best Swede finished fourth, and he ended up being disqualified for the same reason.
According to virtually all media reports, including those penned by Finnish pundits, the main (if not the only) culprit was Pekka Päivärinta, one of the very best distance runners in the world and the first athlete to cross the finish line on that memorable Sunday. Päivärinta had ‘spoiled everything’ on the 50th anniversary of the meet, he was guilty of ’unsportsmanly behavior’ and had indulged in ‘clowning around’ – unless, as somebody suggested, he was a victim of a sunstroke on an unexceptionally hot Scandinavian summer’s day.
Surprisingly or not, Päivärinta kept his cool, denying any wrongdoing on his part. The three Finnish runners, he argued, had merely stuck to their race tactic and obtained a glorious triple victory. And that’s how he still feels about it, as my recent Finnish-language inquiry established.
Unexpectedly (as far as I’m concerned), the disqualified Swedish athlete too disagreed with the official judgment. ’No one should have been disqualified in this race’, Bengt Nåjde opined to the Swedish media – the same athlete who, according to public opinion, had been badly mistreated by Päivärinta.
The moral of the story is, I believe, obvious, and I’m by no means the first person to discover it. There is ‘sport ethics’ by outsiders, such as journalists, academics and other random commentators. Then there is ‘sport ethics’ by practice insiders – Päivärinta, Nåjde and their successors racing in Stockholm and elsewhere this weekend.
Whose ethics we choose to respect?
