Lasse Viren Fell on Lap 12 and Still Set a World Record

On 3 September 1972 in Munich, with twelve and a half laps to go in the 10,000m final, Lasse Viren of Finland clipped feet with Belgium's Emiel Puttemans and went down. Tunisia's Mohamed Gammoudi, the defending Olympic 5,000m champion, tripped over Viren and went down too, harder. Gammoudi tried to come back and dropped out a few laps later. Viren got up about twenty meters behind the lead pack.

Within 150 meters he had clawed back contact. He sat in. Then with 600 meters left, he started a kick that nobody but Puttemans could match, and even Puttemans only briefly. Viren crossed the line in 27:38.35 — a world record, more than a second under Ron Clarke's mark from 1965.

The Finnish distance tradition was the part nobody on the track that day talked about, but that Helsinki understood instantly. Paavo Nurmi and Hannes Kolehmainen had won six Olympic distance golds for Finland in the 1920s, and after Volmari Iso-Hollo's 3,000m steeplechase win in 1936, the country had gone 36 years without one. Viren ended the drought from the floor.

Five days later he won the 5,000m as well, in 13:26.42 — another Olympic record. He repeated the 5,000–10,000 double at Montreal in 1976, the only man to do it twice. The 1972 race is the one people still pull up. He fell. He got up. He won faster than anyone ever had.