Matti Kilpelainen: More Than Gold

By Ralph Hardy

Matti Kilpelainen is a unicorn. Don’t believe me? Draw a circle and label it 75-year-old men. Overlay a circle on that labeled pole vaulters. Add another circle to the Venn diagram and label it world champions. Just for kicks add a fourth circle: Finnish Americans who won their world championships in freaking Finland. How many people out of 8 billion in the world fit in that intersection? One. Matti Kilpelainen.

A history lesson. In August 1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, which divided Poland and placed Finland under the “sphere of Soviet influence.” Three months later the Soviet Union invaded Finland with the goal of annexing it, and thus began the “Winter War.” The intrepid Finns fought on skis and sleds and treated the Soviet soldiers like biathlon targets, holding off the vaunted Soviet army for months before Moscow and the Finnish government signed a peace treaty which ceded almost 10% of Finland to their foe, but established a temporary truce. Hitler, after seeing Finland’s success against the Soviets, tore up their non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union and occupied Finland until the Finns kicked them out in 1944. Ten years later, in 1954, a young Finnish boy named Matti, whose father and uncle fought the Russians, would emigrate with his family to Michigan. Sixty-eight years later, Matti would return to Finland and win the world pole vaulting championship, clearing 2.80 m (9’2) in the over 75 age group against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. History does repeat itself.

Matti’s family first moved to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but there was little work to be found, so they moved to Detroit, where Matti’s engineer-trained father found work as a carpenter. His family periodically returned to Finland and it was there, at a kind of summer camp, that Matti first pole vaulted, using a metal pole and landing in sand. Matti joined the high school track team, but he was more than just a vaulter. He hurdled, high jumped and threw the shot too. But it was his pole vaulting prowess and an indoor championship win at 13’6 that caught the eye of legendary University of Michigan track coach Dan Canham. Perhaps influenced by the success of Eele Lundstrom, the Finnish bronze medalist pole vaulter in the Rome Olympics, Canham gave Matti a partial scholarship, and the blond, square-jawed immigrant was able to fulfill his dream to attend university. At Michigan his college best was 15.6, good enough to place in the Big Ten championships and only a foot under the world record at the time.

But after graduating with a degree in physical education, Matti wasn’t through with pole vaulting; nor was it through with him. He followed a track and field teammate to Los Angeles to barnstorm the pole vault circuit, and there he met a vivacious young Jewish woman named Jutka Kovac, an emigre from Hungary, whose mother and grandmother were saved from the German death camps by Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg, a Swedish architect and University of Michigan alum, saved between five and ten thousand Hungarian Jews from extermination by providing them fake documents or hiding them in buildings with fake Swedish names. Wallenberg was later kidnapped by the Soviets and executed in 1947 and posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government. Jutka, alone, lost forty family members to Auschwitz.

Two years after meeting Matti, Jutka moved to Michigan. They married, and Matti started teaching PE and coaching track, which he did for half a century, sending countless athletes to college on scholarships, even to the Ivies. “Most pole vaulters are very good students,” Matti says. Matti himself continued to vault and compete in decathlons, until injuries forced him to concentrate on the vault.

Life marched on. Matti set world records at 55 (4.10m) and 60 (3.85m). They had a daughter and enjoyed countless profes- sional successes. As they approached their seventies, Matti and Jutka begin to plan their retirement. Then Jutka was diagnosed with hydrocephalus dementia and their plans unraveled. Matti became a caretaker, molding his day around his wife’s needs. He continued to train though, lifting twice a week, running sprints; he still did his pole runs and dynamic exercises and vaulted once a week. But with his wife’s illness and the global Covid shutdown, the chance to compete again was slipping away. Then he saw that the Masters world championships were being held in Finland. His friends in Helsinki said they’d host him and provide poles. His daughter and a former high school vaulter protégée said they’d look after Jutka. Reluctantly, he left for his home country.

Matti Kilepelainen in 1968

About that 2.80 vault that won the world championship: after clearing it on his third attempt, Matti was ready to move up to 2.83 when the skies opened up and rain put an end to the event. Only later did Matti learn that the meet record for his age group is 2.83m. Four centimeters is an inch and a half. Still, he’s the world champion--maalimanmestari in Finnish.

Somewhere along the way home he caught Covid and later Jutka caught it as well. They’ve recovered, and Matti is back caring for his wife. He trains, he keeps up with the pole vault world and his life-long friends, uncertain of what the future will bring. But one thing seems certain: it will involve flying with a pole over a bar as only a unicorn can.

At the 2022 World Masters Athletic Championships.From left to right. Leonardo Pedro Salvarrey Saravia- Uruguay, Matti Kilpelainen-USA, Reijo Murto- Finland, Mati Tinder-Estonia, Veikko Makela-Finland, Rudolf Vilcek-Slovak Republic

All photos provided by Matti Kilpelainen.