““A national obsession with a particular sport does not occur in a vacuum. Something lights the match. In the early twentieth century, Finland was a poor, nonindustrialized country where many people worked outdoors and got around on foot and (during the winter) on cross-country skis. These fertile conditions produced Hannes Kolehmainen, who won three gold medals in running events at the 1912 Olympics. Kolehmainen’s triumphs ignited an intense running craze in his home country. Every Finnish boy wanted to be the next Olympic hero. The result was a quarter-century of Finnish dominance of distance running, a dynasty that produced a number of athletes whose performances far surpassed those of the man who’d started it all. Ultimately, the passionate and widespread participation in running that Hannes Kolehmainen inspired had a much stronger impact on the performance of Finland’s top runners than did the conditions of poverty, lack of industrialization, and human-powered transportation that produced the first great Finnish runner. Sociologist””
