Pekka Vasala
Finnish middle- and long distance runner
Pekka Antero Vasala (born 17 April 1948) is a retired Finnish middle-distance athlete who won an Olympic gold medal in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Vasala had a brilliant three-month period in 1972 when he won an Olympic gold medal at 1,500 meters and set a new European record in the 800 meters running 1:44.5. The time was only 0.2 seconds off the world record. His Olympic gold would be his only major international medal. He retired in 1974.
Vasala was not considered a medal contender in the 1,500 m at the beginning of the season. He surprisingly won gold over Kip Keino in 3:36.3, a time which topped the world rankings that year.
Vasala had competed at the 1968 Olympics, where he was eliminated in his first-round heat of the 1,500 m. He was a 3:41.8 runner that season. He improved to 3:41.0 in 1970 and 3:38.6 in 1971.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q954901. VIAF identifies the subject as 60555330. The Library of Congress control number is n86002511. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1972, 1974 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pekka Vasala” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.