Pitkämäki takes bronze rather than hoped-for gold as Finns end Olympics with four medals

Finnish javelinists third, fourth and fifth, but Andreas Thorkildsen steals the show

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Finland’s medals total from the Summer Olympics in Beijing rose to four on Saturday as Tero Pitkämäki, the World Champion from 2007, collected a bronze in the men’s javelin.
      An Olympic medal is always welcome, but for Pitkämäki - and probably for a sizeable proportion of the Finnish population - it was the wrong colour this time.
      More or less ever since he won the World Championship title in Osaka last year, Pitkämäki had been seen as Finland’s brightest hope of bringing home gold.
      Even with a June injury and a dip in form over the past couple of months, it was believed he could repeat his victory from Osaka last year, especially as his main rival, Norway’s Andreas Thorkildsen, looked to have problems of his own.
     
Saturday’s final proved just the opposite: from the very first throw, this javelin competition only had one winner, and it was Thorkildsen.
      The gold medallist in Athens retained his title with a master-class of throwing, and even without a massive heave of 90.57, setting a new Olympic record and adding one and a half metres to the previous best throw of the year, he would still have won comfortably with his third attempt, which carried 87.93 metres.
      At no stage in the competition was Thorkildsen anywhere but at the top of the pile, and he has rightfully taken the position of primus motor in the sport in the wake of the legendary Czech thrower Jan Zelezny.
     
Pitkämäki rallied to throw 85.83 with his fifth attempt, and looked like collecting the silver medal behind Thorkildsen. However, in the final round Ainars Kovals of Latvia hauled himself up from 6th spot with a throw of 86.64, some six metres beyond his previous personal best for the season.
      Pitkämäki tried to respond, but his last and best throw carried only 86.16 to leave him in third place.
     
The other two Finns in the final occupied the invidious first two spots outside the medals, with Tero Järvenpää (83.95) fourth and Teemu Wirkkala (83.46) fifth.
      Järvenpää produced one prodigious throw that carried around 88 and a half metres, but his run-up was all at sea and he grossly overstepped the front of the runway, so leaving little room for “What if...” conjecture.
     
Some idea of the Finnish expectations for what is a blue riband track and field event hereabouts can be had from the fact that a TV audience of 1.3 million tuned in to watch the proceedings on Saturday afternoon.
      Seven Finns have won gold medals previously in the men’s event, most recently Tapio Korjus in Seoul.
      Seppo Räty took the bronze on that occasion, silver in Barcelona, and another bronze in Atlanta, but in 2000 and 2004 we came up dry.
     
In the men’s marathon, run early on Sunday morning Beijing time, Finland’s Francis Kirwa came home in 17th in a time of 2:14:22, two places and 22 seconds ahead of Janne Holmén, the 2003 European Champion.
      Both men performed much according to advance expectations, even if the race itself was anything but ordinary.
      Victory went to Kenya’s Samuel Kamau Wanjiru in a blistering time of 2:06:32, slicing nearly three minutes off the old Olympic record and leaving the television commentators short on superlatives.
     
As the dust settles on the Beijing Olympics, Finland’s team of 58 athletes will return with four medals and eight placings in the points.
      There is bound to be discussion on who delivered and who did not, even if the Finnish contingent exceeded the relatively modest official target of three medals - one of them gold - and six results in the top eight positions.
      All the medallists - Satu Mäkelä-Nummela (gold, women’s trap shooting), Sanna Stén and Minna Nieminen (silver, women’s lightweight double sculls), Henri Häkkinen (bronze, men’s air rifle), and Pitkämäki - were in the group of athletes chosen to represent Finland in Beijing well in advance, at the end of last year.
      The national Olympic Committee will go through the team’s performance this autumn.
      Briefings from each of the disciplines will be examined, and a final report will be delivered in October, with recommendations for the future.
     
The standard phrase at moments like this is that the level reached by the best Finnish athletes will not be adequate in four years’ time in London, owing to the nature of sport and its constant quest for higher, faster and further.
      These Olympics were no exception to that rule: more than forty new world records were set and over 120 new Olympic records.
      In any event, to finish higher than 44th in the medals table Finland needs more athletes who can produce their personal best or a best performance of the season when it counts.
     
The Finns will look around them and see that Norway performed quite well, with 10 medals, three of them gold, and Denmark, too, were ahead of us with two golds, two silvers, and three bronze medals.
      The Swedes, on the other hand, came away from Beijing with four silver medals and one bronze, arguably their poorest showing ever. In Sydney and Athens, the Swedes collected four gold medals each time.
      Estonia also got on the gold standard, with one gold medal and one silver. Iceland came within a whisker of collecting their first-ever Olympic gold medal, but the men’s handball team fell to France 28-23 in the final.
     
The Chinese hosts collected a massive haul of 51 gold medals (out of an available 302) and 100 medals altogether, putting them ten short of the total won by the United States, although the U.S. team could only bag 36 golds.
      Russia came third, just ahead of a resurgent Great Britain, whose total of 47 medals (19-13-15) came as a surprise to all and will doubtless be a filip for London 2012.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Rowers Stén and Nieminen bring back third medal from Beijing (18.8.2008)
  Satu Mäkelä-Nummela wins gold in Beijing women´s trap event (11.8.2008)

Links:
  Beijing 2008: Men´s Javelin
  Finnish Team in Beijing
  2008 Summer Olympics, Medals Table (Wikipedia)

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