The Winter(Sport)’s Tale

Arctic heroes meet the Bard The Winter(Sport)’s Tale

Written by Matti Mäkelä translated by alex ahlgren & OWen F. WitesMan

The history of Finnish winter sports is full of grand emotions, tragedy and larger-than-life characters. Just like Shakespeare’s plays.

Above: Mika Myllylä practising in the bog in his hometown Haapajärvi. photo: hAnneS heiKuRA, hS / lehtiKuvA The best ski jumper of all time, Matti Nykänen, who won four Olympic gold medals in the 1980s, six world championships and 46 World Cup competitions, is perhaps the most Shakespearian of Finnish winter sports heroes, combining Hamlet and Falstaff in the same person. Hamlet is especially known for his distinctive monologues (as well as for seeing ghosts), whereas

Nykänen’s specialty was his endless supply of seemingly senseless one-liners (“life is man’s best time”, “the odds are fifty-sixty”).

Lahti was Finland’s Lady Macbeth moment - amid the fall from grace, everything crystallized into one question: “What, will these hands ne’er be clean?”

In addition to his success in sports, Nykänen’s popularity was based – just like Falstaff’s, perhaps Shakespeare’s most beloved character – on his role as a sympathetic knave and bon vivant. Nykänen’s legendary escapades included leaving in the middle of the training season for a beach party vacation, then flying straight from there to the World Championships and winning a silver medal. Unfortunately, after his sports career ended, alcoholism, violence and jail time changed the story from a rollicking comedy into a tragedy, which ended with Nykänen’s death at the age of 55. Nykänen’s oft-used nickname “ski jumping’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” tells you everything you need to know.

A gReAt mAn succumbing to his own ambitions and weaknesses is typical of Shakespeare’s characters, the most well-known examples of which are Richard III and Macbeth. In the history of Finnish skiing, this will forever be the story of Mika Myllylä. Myllylä became every Finn’s hero by winning the men’s 30 kilometer cross-country skiing Olympic gold medal in 1998 and three world championships in 1999. However, what was anticipated to be the crowning achievement of Myllylä’s career, the 2001 World Championship in Lahti, Finland, was overshadowed by a doping scandal, which turned this national hero into a national traitor. Like Nykänen, Myllylä’s life was difficult after the end of his sports career, including drunk driving and assault convictions. Myllylä’s life ended in an accident at only 41 years old.

Myllylä was not the only Finnish athlete to be busted using banned substances at the Lahti World Championships. The first skier caught, Jari Isometsä, said that he had acted on his own and received help from outside the country’s ski team. It later emerged that this story had been agreed upon between Isometsä and the coaching staff while sitting together in a sauna, i.e. in the words of Lady Macbeth: “A little water clears us of this deed”. Although Isometsä fell on his sword (or in his case perhaps his ski pole) in the best Marcus Antonius style, that did not prevent exposure of large-scale, systematic doping. In addition to Myllylä and Isometsä, two other male and two female skiers were banned from competition, and the team’s coaches and doctors received long bans.

Lahti was Finland’s Lady Macbeth moment – amid the fall from grace, everything crystallized into one question: “What, will these hands ne’er be clean?” Images of endless press conferences were burned into the memories of Finnish viewers as the ski federation leadership assured everyone of their shock and ignorance. Marcus Antonius might have given the same sarcastic testimony about Caesar’s assassins: “… they are all Honorable men.”

Completely broken after the games, Myllylä published his “last will and testament” in which he apologized to the Finnish people and the entire athletic world for his mistakes. As if from Shakespeare’s pen, Myllylä surrendered in the face of cruel fate: “I believe God wanted this to happen to me… Now there is no more hurry. The battle is over.”

In fAct, the oft-repeated lesson of the Bard’s stories is that no one can escape their fate, no matter how heroic they are. This was forgotten by Juha Mieto, who missed the 15-kilometer gold medal in cross-country skiing at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics by one hundredth of a second. This defeat was bitter, but in a way it was expected, since previous important races had shown that the ski gods did not favor this giant of a Finn. In 1972, he lost the Olympic bronze by six hundredths of a second, in 1974 he left the World Championship with a silver medal because he was still using wooden skis while the winner used technically superior fiberglass, and in 1978 a failed ski wax dropped him to bronze, leaving the gold only five seconds out of reach. Despite the bad precedent, Mieto left for Lake Placid with the same certainty of victory as Julius Caesar leaving for the Senate, disregarding the strange behavior of birds and other evil omens. After the assassins strike, Caesar wraps himself in his toga and dies, and Mieto escapes to the silence and loneliness of the forest after his defeat.

Shakespeare’s dramas are not mere gloom and doom, though; there are also good moments. “We few, we happy few, we band of Brothers,” proclaimed King Henry V as he roused his troops’ thirst for victory before one decisive battle. These words could have been from Jukka Jalonen, the head coach of the Finnish team that took home a sensational win at the 2019 Ice Hockey World Championship. Before the match, the Finnish media had dubbed the team as the worst in its history. However, the steadfast teammates banned together during the playoffs to overthrow Sweden, Russia and Canada.

FinAlly, let’S RetuRn to Mika Myllylä’s last will and testament, the final lines of which are so chilling that even the Bard himself would be proud: “Once again my ears are enchanted by the mystical allure of the serene Tervaneva (the swamp where Myllylä practiced). Humble, grateful and desolate, I will roam back against the headwind for the last time, kneel and concede my defeat, and beg for peace for my soul.” s

BEIJING WINTER OLYMPICS FEBRUARY 4–20, 2022

Shakespeare quotes and references: Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Richard III.