run in New York in 1914, when he won over a field of 1,300 starters. Having gone back to Finland, he returned once more to the United States in 1915, to marry a Finnish-American girl, Alma A. Johnson. His last race in the United States was the marathon sponsored by the Evening Mail, for which President Woodrow Wilson gave the signal for the start by pressing a button at the White House, and the `Flying Finn' came in first, followed by his compatriot Wille Kyrönen. After his return to Finland, Kolehmainen once more won the gold medal for the marathon at the Antwerp Olympics in 1920.

After Kolehmainen, the name of Paavo Nurmi, seven times

too, visited America, and he was given the kind of reception i granted to only a few famous persons: an official launch landed him in New York, where he was taken direct to City Hall to be greeted by Mayor Hylan, who gave him the keys to the city. The reception he received everywhere was an enthusiastic one, and Harvard University coach Jaakko Mikkola described one of them "The vast stadium was filled to the last seat, and a big crowd still milled about outside. When Nurmi arrived on the track to limber up, the spectators greeted him with resounding cheers." In Minnesota, Nurmi appeared at Minneapolis on 18 April 1924, but his greatest race was probably the one at the Los Angeles stadium, with 100,000 spectators present. While he was in America he also competed against the Hopi Indians, known for -heir fleetness, but he won easily over them. Even the Englishlanguage newspapers of Minnesota had increasingly more laudatory articles about this phantom-like Finn, this `unbeatable Paavo,' day after day. For months his name remained in the newspaper columns, and time after time people looked over their maps of Europe to see where they could find Suomi, the Nurmi Land. And in many a school, particularly in Minnesota, whenever the teachers spoke of Nurmi, hands here and there would rise and voices speak up, "I am a Finn, too."

When it came to the era of World War II, it was the Finn Taisto Mäki who had replaced Nurmi in the sport world, and it was Nurmi who escorted this younger Finn to America in the spring of 1940, for a series of exhibition races, at the invitation of the Hoover Relief Committee. In Minneapolis, Mäki took part in a meet between the universities of Minnesota and Iowa, and although he did not win that particular race, the event raised considerable funds for Finnish relief.

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