{"id":5053,"date":"2025-08-23T11:56:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T09:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=5053"},"modified":"2025-08-25T00:15:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T22:15:19","slug":"sport-ethics-for-beginners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/sport-ethics-for-beginners\/","title":{"rendered":"Sport ethics for beginners"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This weekend it is Sweden\u2019s turn to host Finland for the rather extraordinary and, indeed, unique athletics dual match the history of which goes back one hundred years.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

There <\/a>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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The happy-go-lucky Finn went on to win the race \u2013 only to be disqualified for excessive elbowing. The best Swede finished fourth, and he ended up being disqualified for the same reason.<\/p>\n

According to virtually all media reports, including those penned by Finnish pundits, the main (if not the only) culprit was Pekka P\u00e4iv\u00e4rinta, one of the very best distance runners in the world and the first athlete to cross the finish line on that memorable Sunday. P\u00e4iv\u00e4rinta had \u2018spoiled everything\u2019 on the 50th anniversary of the meet, he was guilty of ’unsportsmanly behavior’ and had indulged in \u2018clowning around\u2019 \u2013 unless, as somebody suggested, he was a victim of a sunstroke on an unexceptionally hot Scandinavian summer\u2019s day.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly or not, P\u00e4iv\u00e4rinta 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 <\/a>established.<\/p>\n

Unexpectedly (as far as I’m concerned), the disqualified Swedish athlete too disagreed with the official judgment. \u2019No one should have been disqualified in this race\u2019, Bengt N\u00e5jde opined to the Swedish media \u2013 the same athlete who, according to public opinion, had been badly mistreated by P\u00e4iv\u00e4rinta.<\/p>\n

The moral of the story is, I believe, obvious, and I’m by no means the first person to discover it. There is \u2018sport ethics\u2019 by outsiders, such as journalists, academics and other random commentators. Then there is \u2018sport ethics\u2019 by practice insiders \u2013 P\u00e4iv\u00e4rinta, N\u00e5jde and their successors racing in Stockholm and elsewhere this weekend.<\/p>\n

Whose ethics we choose to respect?<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend it is Sweden\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-okategoriserade"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/finnkampen.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JbBl-1jv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5053"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5069,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions\/5069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}