As a child, Paavo Johannes Nurmi used to walk miles to reach school.
He stopped school at 12, after his father died, and became an errandboy at a bakery. Dragging carts and lugging sacks around Turku, his hometown in Finland, became a daily affair.
The hard life — four siblings and the entire family lived in one cramped room — could have been the secret behind Nurmi’s fantastic track record — some 58 world records or world bests. He had in all a record 12 Olympic medals, including nine golds from three Summer Games between 1920 and 1928. Five of the golds came in the 1924 Olympics in Paris where the Finn won the 1500m and the 5000m, running with just a couple of hours break between them.
‘Flying Finn',’ ‘Phantom Finn’ or the ‘King of runners' as he came to be known, Nurmi's Olympic debut was at Antwerp in 1920 where he won three golds — 10,000m and in the individual and team cross country — and a silver in the 5000m.
In Paris four years later, he did better, winning the 1500, 5000, the individual and team cross country and the 3000m team event. He yearned for more and when he was not entered for the 10,000m, (his teammate Ville Ritola was chosen) Nurmi vented his anger by running the same distance concurrently on the warm-up track and finished faster than Ritola who had taken the gold with a world record.!
At the Amsterdam Games 1928 he broke Ritola's record by more than six seconds but could manage only silver medals in the 5000 and 3000m steeple chase.
Marathon was his next interest. Encouraged by amazing trial times he got ready for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics but the Sweden's Olympic Committee’s complaint to IOC that Nurmi had received money on his American tours — which made him a professional — he was banned. A successful businessman in later life, Nurmi was given the honour oflighting the Olympic flame when Finland hosted the 1952 Olympics in Helsink. He died in 1973 at the age of 76.
