Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
NT DOWNHILL FOR THE ‘FLYING FINN’ Stripper, pop star, addict.. and greatest ski jumper of all time
ped. Nykanen tried to enter politics, his boozing scuppered that, so he me a lounge singer in a restaurant. was so short of cash in 1995 that ld his gold medals. Four years later, ecame a stripper in a Helsinki casino. he was booed off stage for staggering refusing to do the “full monty”. ykanen tried working for a sex ne line and appeared in an erotic And in 2002 he recorded a third m called Maybe I Had a Drink, be I Didn’t, parodying himself. e public still loved him and catchses such as, “the odds are fifty-sixty,” “tomorrow is always the future” red the Finnish lexicon. ings turned sour in 2004 when was playing Sormikoukku, or er wrestling, with a pal. Linking dex fingers, the aim is to pull our opponent off their chair.
But when his friend won the bout, Nykanen stabbed him in the back. He claimed he was so drunk he had no recollection of the attack and a judge sentenced him to 26 months for assault. He was let out after 11 months.
Nykanen had always been a philanderer. He was married six times, twice to the same woman, engaged to two others including a contestant from Finland’s The Apprentice, and had a child from a one-night stand.
He wed his first wife, Tiina Hassinen, a month after meeting her in 1986 but they divorced in 1988. They had a son, Sami. His second wife, Pia Hynninen, was a saleswoman. They wed in 1989 and divorced in 1991 and had a daughter, Evelina. He married restauranteur Sari Paanala in 1996 and attracted coachloads of patrons by serving tables and singing. They divorced in 1998.
Then, in 2001, he married Mervi Tapola, a sausage heiress. They divorced in 2003, remarried in 2004 and divorced again in 2010.
The relationship was abusive and led to many court appearances with
Mervi filing for divorce 15 times. Four days after Nykanen was freed on parole for the stabbing he was held for assaulting his wife and sent back to jail. On his release in 2006 he stabbed a man in a pizza restaurant and got four more months. In 2007 Nykanen went into rehab and seemed to have made a fresh start. He joined the veteran ski-jumping circuit and planned to become a celebrity chef. Then it went downhill again. On Christmas Day, 2009 police were called after Nykanen pulled a knife on Mervi and tried to strangle her with a dressing gown chord. He went back to prison for 16 months. In 2014 the fallen hero married Pia Talonpoika, a former actress, who was with him when he died in his sleep on February 4 from an undisclosed illness. Nykanen had been diagnosed with diabetes at the end of last year but reportedly refused to adapt his diet or stop drinking.
“We tried many, many ways to help him,” said his coach Pulli. “We tried the clinics, but whenever he came back he’d go drinking again.”
Last month Nykanen got an ovation when he sang at a restaurant in Helsinki.
But it failed to raise the spirits of the former Olympic icon.
“Consider yourself lucky your name isn’t Matti Nykanen,” he said, sadly.
Because the Flying Finn who once soared so high had fallen too far.