Another quiz

[Guest]

O.K. White Fox asks some fun questions. So I have one for you all. Who was the "Flying Finn"? If you want another, there was another "Flying Finn", but he raced motocross. Who is the second "Flying Finn?

 

JA

 

PS A hint on the first one is "Citius Altius Fortius"

[Mr Barguzin]

Ummmmm... well, according to Wikipedia..... Which Finn??

 

Their discussion

 

A runner, but which one... Paarvi?? ... motor sport... Hakkinnen comes to mind, and rally drivers... well, where to start?

 

Or is this a trick question.... oh and reason for going to Wiki was that I wanted to get Paarvi's spelling correct *blush*

[White Fox]

I am way better at making questions than figuring answers I am afraid. You got me on this one and I don't want to search for the answer as that spoils the fun. It certainly does have a "circus ring" to it, but that is likely not the answer.

[ew19975]

I haven't gotten up enough 'oomph' to go digging on Google (or elsewhere), but I do believe that we are talking about a ski jumper in this case.

[Guest]

Paavo Nurmi. He won three gold medals and one silver when competing in four events in the 1920 Olympics. He had a total of 12 Olympic medals (9 gold and 3 silver) during his career.

 

The other Flying Finn I was thinking about (I forgot about Hakkinen (sp?)) was Heiki Mikkola who was a world champion motocross racer in the 70s, At least one championship was on a Yamaha.

 

My $0.02.

 

JA

 

PS I ordered a pair of rex rabbit glove from MinkgLove...can't wait!

[White Fox]

I can barely imagine these folks who win one Olympic medal today. But to win so many (and people still do today) is so unbelievable.

[Guest]

You're right. It IS amazing! What kind of irritated me with the Michael Phelps thing with the inevitable comparison to Mark Sptiz was that everybody seemed to forget Matt Biondi. Biondi won seven medals in Seoul Korea in '88 (I'm pretty sure it was Seoul and not LA). He won FIVE golds, a silver and a bronze all in one Olympics. Prior to the Olympics THE comparison was between Biondi and Sptiz... The problem with Biondi was that when he swam his wake (yes he had a wake) was so big that it allowed one of his Olympic competitors to surf his wake into the finish to beat him. The TV people replayed the finish of the race at least five times. You could probably find it on YouTube. At any rate, Biondi was amazing! Plus he won at least one national championship in water polo (another exciting sport...see WF's other sports question) while he was a student at Cal (GO BEARS!). I had the pleasure to watch him swim and play water polo.

[grouchomg]

Here is an unorthodox answer to the question "Who was rhe Flying Finn?"

 

The "Flying Finns" was the moniker of sports teams for Appleton Academy, a high school close to where I grew up (and now closed when the local school districts "went regional"). They got that name from the fact that the local population was sprinkled with a high proportion of folks from Finland who came to the Northeast to work in local granite quarries. Alas! Like Appleton Academy the quarries are all closed which fills my geologist soul with sadness.

[White Fox]

All goes back of course to the fact that the Scandinavian countries were the home of the Vikings. And for a long while the Vikings ruled both the known and the unknown world. So much of Europe has a Viking thread running through it. And thus we do too. We even had one colony of Vikings here for a long while, and likely there were more that we just do not know of now.