9 minute read
Once were strong, silent men
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Written by Matti Mäkelä translated by Christina saarinen
Tony Soprano is frustrated. He complains to his psychiatrist that men like Gary Cooper (or actually, Cooper's character in the film High Noon) don't exist anymore. In his opinion, Cooper was the perfect man: a strong, silent type who got things done and never complained.
The most famous gangster in TV history could just as well be talking about the past giants of Finnish sport. Running legend Paavo Nurmi was the most silent of the silent, the strongest of the strong. The image of a man who tirelessly runs around the track with a stopwatch in his hand, smashing one record after another, has gone down in history. He never complains; he always does what a man has to do. When Nurmi thought the fee offered by a race organizer was unacceptably low, he didn’t bother arguing. Instead, he stopped his 10,000-meter run 2,000 meters before the finish line,
running exactly the distance he thought the fee was worth. When Nurmi was prevented from competing in the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932 due to accusations of professionalism, he remained silent for decades about how much the decision – and the loss of a tenth Olympic gold – had wounded him. He kept quiet and grew bitter.
“He faced down the Miller Gang when none of those assholes in town would lift a finger to help him!” Tony Soprano exclaims in praise of the solitary sheriff of High Noon. The “High Noon” moment of Finnish sport was the men’s 5,000-meter final in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. Lasse Viren, chasing his fourth Olympic gold, started the last lap in the lead, but in a seemingly hopeless situation: “He can’t win – no, that would be completely impossible. Dixon and Quax could run 800 meters five seconds faster than Lasse,” writes journalist Matti Hannus later in his Montréal Olympics book. As they open onto the final straight, “they loom behind Lasse like a tidal wave,” and Dick Quax pulls up next to Viren. As Quax appears to pass, Viren briefly turns his head toward his rival and smiles. In that moment, the duel is over. Quax is left behind and Viren runs on to victory. “Fifty meters before the finish line, I saw out of the corner of my eye how they were grimacing and looked like they were suffering, and that’s when I realized I would win,” Viren said after the race.
In August 2022, Viren was a guest of honor at the European Athletics Championships in Munich, where he had won his first two Olympic golds 50 years earlier. “Why bother reminiscing about that anymore,” he says, turning down media interview requests. Tony Soprano nods his approval.
With his laconic comment, Viren takes Finnish sports heroism from High Noon to Shane. At the end of Shane, the main character rides off into the mountains, toward the setting sun, after having rescued a farming family from the clutches of a gang of thugs. Shane’s stooped figure (whether mortally wounded or merely battle-weary, we will never know) continues to ride away, even as the family’s admiring little boy shouts after him, like reporters pleading with Viren, “Shane, come back!” THe liveS of strong and quiet men aren’t always an uninterrupted string of wins. Unrequited love leads John Wayne’s hero to destruction in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Dean Martin’s gunslinger to alcoholism in Rio Bravo. In Finnish sport, ski jumper Matti Nykänen and skier Mika Myllylä play the same kind of “knight of the sad countenance” role. Their destructive lover was the Finnish public, and their downward spirals were accelerated by the shame brought by Myllylä's doping scandal and by Nykänen's many life management problems.
Taking on the role of John Wayne or Gary Cooper is a heavy burden precisely because it is a role, a role you have to constantly embody, and which is nearly impossible to get rid of. Javelin thrower Seppo Räty – the 1987 world champion and a six-time medalist in major competitions – was an extremely uncompromising and conscientious athlete. But when the media asked about his his training methods leading up to the World Championships, his answer matched his manly role: “Drinking beer and playing cards.”
In the words of the newspaperman who discovered the real killer of Liberty Valance and kept it to himself: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” WHile tHe erA of men like Gary Cooper is over, it seems that Tony Soprano isn’t the only one who misses them. This year, the Finnish women’s national ice hockey team gave a terrible performance at the World Championships, finishing sixth, the team’s worst ranking of all time. Scapegoats were made of the team’s star player, Susanna Tapani, who missed one of the preliminary-round games to attend a friend’s wedding, and the coach, Juuso Toivola, who gave her permission to go. Although Tapani’s decision was unusual for a top athlete, and nothing hurts team spirit more than giving special treatment to certain players, instead of criticizing team operating models, commenters mostly demanded a return to old-school attitude: You do your job! And you don’t complain! The same kind of criticism was heard a few years ago, when a snowboarder selected for the Olympics stated that winning a medal would be nice, but the most important thing was taking part in the international community of snowboarders touring the Games. Those
Shane's stooped figure who were shocked by the comment wanted continues to ride away, even as the athlete’s selection revoked because in their opinion, this hippie had clearly not the family's admiring little boy internalized the most ancient wisdom of sport: shouts after him, like reporters “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing!” The collision of the old world and the pleading with Viren, new is also a frequently recurring theme “Shane, come back!” in Westerns. The men of the past world are destroyed because they lack the desire or the ability to adapt. The conversation between Harmonica and Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West sums it up: Harmonica: “So, you found out you’re not a businessman after all.” Frank: “Just a man.” As the men prepare to duel, Ennio Morricone’s music playing in the background, modern society approaches in the form of a railroad. In Finland, this collision was seen after the 2011 Ice Hockey World Championships. The young players celebrating their championship gave measured and analytical statements to the media, while at the same time, a member of the coaching staff collapsed, utterly drunk, in front of media cameras, and another was sent back to the hotel to sober up. Tony SoprAno Still sits in a cafe. Suddenly, he’s gone, and the TV screen is filled with snowy white noise. s The Sopranos (1999–2007), HBO Original Series Matti Hannus: Montreal: Olympiakirja (1976) John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Howard Hawks: Rio Bravo (1959) Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) George Stevens: Shane (1953) Fred Zinnemann: High Noon (1952)
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