Looming less than 50 days from now, Louna-Jukola will make it a kind of a triple, since it will be the third Jukola Relay in history held in Paimio. 1972, 1993 and now 2015 – it’s been just over two decades in between each of them, so maybe the next time for Paimio will be in 2038. But what happened 43 years ago at the sandpits in Mäntyrinne?

The Louna-Jukola terrain is not untouched in terms of Jukola, as the 1972 edition took place in the same area. Even the competition centre then was located just a stone’s throw from that next June, a bit south of the late Paimio Motel. At that time the custom was that the locations of Jukola Relays were kept secret until the very end. So, a big group of the organizers of 1972 Jukola made a “diversion” by going and checking possible locations e.g. on the other side of the city of Salo.

In the beginning of 1970’s there were no orienteering clubs in Paimio region, and so the 1972 Jukola was organized by one of the hosts of Louna-Jukola, Turun Suunnistajat.

The Jukola Relay found its winner not that far away: the neighbouring Liedon Parma took their second victory out of three in total. Especially Veikko Kiili and Tuomo Peltola on two last legs played an important role in the triumph. Women’s individual competition, the Venla Run, was held for the first time on Saturday afternoon before men’s Jukola Relay, instead of during it in the middle of the night; the Finnish manifold world championship medallist Pirjo Seppä of Virolahden Sampo took an overpowering victory among close to 200 women.

Many remember the “glowworm” formed by first leg runners, and leading it for most of the time was the Finnish legend, cross-country skiing Olympic medallist Juha Mieto. In his time, Mieto did mighty performances many times on the first legs of Jukola, and in 1972 he managed to bring his club, Kurikan Ryhti, as the first team into the first changeover.

Ilmari Ojanen, now a veteran orienteer of Turun Suunnistajat, got the task of honour of writing a layout for the greeting of the then-President of Finland, Urho Kekkonen, who acted as a patron of the event. Known as a prolific writer, the President was rigorous about all texts published with his name under them, and also Ojanen’s version failed to get the President’s approval as such.

– The red pen cancelled quite many sentences, so conveniently the text also became shorter. However, my self-esteem was petted by that nothing was added to the text, recalls Ojanen the greeting in which the President wished the Jukola orienteers “a mighty experience amidst their sport”.

Compared to expectations, the 1972 Jukola became practically a mammoth event, with an estimated 20,000 people on the spot. The Jukola Relay broke the limit of 400 teams for the first time ever. By this, Jukola passed its “role model”, the Swedish Tiomila, in terms of the number of competitors.

« Back