Last Olympic athletes return home

inland well behind Norway and Sweden in medals table

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The last of the Finnish athletes returned from Torino on Monday and were met at the airport by the Minister of Culture Tanja Karpela (Centre) and Marjo Matikainen-Källström, Vice-President of the Finnish Olympic Committee and herself an Olympic Champion from Calgary.
      As many of the competitors had returned earlier after completing their events, and since the hockey players had made their own arrangements immediately after Sunday's final match against Sweden, most of the attention was taken by the arrival of the silver medallists of the curling team under their skip Markku Uusipaavalniemi. He was mobbed by journalists at the airport, and commented that the team had all been amused and pleased at the sudden surge in popularity of the tiny sport. 
     
Perhaps for this reason, Karpela's remarks included a reference to the fact that Finns should begin to consider which winter sports events are given the greatest profile in Olympic years to come. The results from Torino indicated that Finland can no longer regard certain of its traditional strong sports as a guaranteed source of medals hardware, but instead new disciplines have emerged to replace them.
      Finland, a country that for all its small size prides itself on a rich vein of sporting success, actually finds itself in a rather unusual position after these Olympics: for the first time in history, the country has no reigning Olympic champions from either the summer or the winter games. This was only the third time that Finland gained no gold medals in a Winter Olympics, matching the situation in Sapporo (1972) and Lillehammer (1994).
      On the positive side, Finland's winter sports prowess does now rest on a considerably wider platform than earlier: the nine medals won came from eight different sports. Apline skiing, curling, and snowboarding are all new arrivals.
     
In the medals table, success and failure are measurable by a good many and varied parameters. If one is to look at gold medals per head of population or the size of the team they sent to the games, small countries like Estonia can hold their head up very high, with three golds brought by two of their cross-country skiers.
      And Norway's tally of 19 medals also looks excellent for a country with a population slightly smaller than Finland's. If total medals are the criterion, then Germany topped the list, with 29, including 11 golds. The USA, Canada, Austria, and Russia all took more than 20 medals in Torino.
     
Within the Nordic region, Finland's six silvers and three bronze medals placed them well back in third place behind the 19 medals that went to Norwegians and the 14 won by Swedes. However, these days in the minds of many it is gold or nothing, and then the Norwegian position looks rather less rosy.
      They went into these games with high hopes of emulating the 13 golds that were won in Salt Lake City, where they were the No.1 nation, but they emerged from the last two weeks with just two Olympic champions and a string of near-misses.
      Sweden, meanwhile got not a single gold in 2002, but took no fewer than seven this time, including that ice hockey victory over Finland that left the country in a state of shock on Sunday afternoon. Denmark and Iceland did not get on the medals scoreboard.
      The all-time list of Winter Olympics medal-winning countries now numbers 42, after Slovakia and Latvia joined the club officially. Athletes from both the countries have, of course won medals in the past, though while competing under other flags.
     
At least one unofficial gold medal can be claimed from Torino. Sunday's ice hockey final was watched on TV by an astonishing 2.4 million people, eclipsing even the annual popular favourite of the Independence Day Reception, and totally trouncing last summer's Athletics World Championships, which attracted only around 1.4 milion viewers on average.
      Another mass gold should go to those few thousand hardy souls who turned out in Helsinki on Sunday night to welcome home the ice hockey team. They waited in sub-zero temperatures until 3 a.m. to catch a glimpse of their heroes. Only a brilliant training regimen and real dedication can produce this kind of performance.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  At least 2,000 wait until early hours to welcome Finnish ice hockey medallists (27.2.2006)

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