Adam Berg

The Flying Finn's American Sojourn: Hannes Kolehmainen in the United States, 1912–1921

Shortly after he won three gold medals and one silver medal in distance running events at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Finlands Hannes Kolehmainen immigrated to the United States. He spent nearly a decade living in Brooklyn, plying his trade as a mason and dominating the amateur endurance running circuit in his adopted homeland. He became a naturalised US citizen in 1921 but returned to Finland shortly thereafter. During his American sojourn, the US press depicted him simultaneously as an exotic foreign athlete and as an immigrant shaped by his new environment into a symbol of successful assimilation. Kolehmainens career raised questions about sport and national identity – both Finnish and American – about the complexities of immigration during the floodtide of European migration to the US, and about native and adopted cultures in shaping the habits of success. His return to Finland ultimately turned the American ‘melting pot’ narrative on its head.

The Ethos of Excellence

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the normative role of conventions in sports. However, the approach I have in mind does not dispatch the theory of interpretivism. What I offer is a synthesis that aims to show how interpretivism works in concert with – and relies heavily on – conventions. To make this point, I will argue that historical, cultural, and even simple preferential needs and desires help to determine what counts as athletic ‘excellence’ in sports.

Finding Wilderness through Games

In forms of physical recreation associated with ‘wilderness experiences’, such as backcountry hiking or mountain climbing, technology is omnipresent. As a result, some may wonder whether genuine wilderness experiences are possible. In this essay, I argue that wilderness experiences are possible and that they can be enhanced through games. That is, I contend there are often physically challenging aspects to wilderness experiences that certain games can help to promote. This analysis will stress the fact that Bernard Suits delineated two comparable but distinct ways to engage in games. Following Suits’s logic, I explain how ‘literal skills’ like walking or climbing can function as the ‘constitutive skills’ of games. I then consider how games predicated on ‘literal skills’ can help promote the meanings available in wilderness experiences.