Martti Tolamo
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Birth name | Martti Leo Topelius | ||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality |
 Finland
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| Born | 21 February 1907 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 14 March 1940 (aged 33) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 1.84 m (6 ft 0 in) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 76 kg (168 lb) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Achievements and titles | |||||||||||||||||||
| Personal best(s) |
Pentathlon: 4011 (1930) Long jump: 7.51 (1934) |
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Medal record
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Martti Leo Tolamo (born Topelius; 21 February 1907 – 14 March 1940) was a Finnish athlete. He competed in the Olympic Games as a decathlete and a long jumper; his other strong event was the non-Olympic pentathlon, in which he broke the unofficial world record in 1930 and won two medals, including a gold, at the International University Games.
At the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam Tolamo competed in the decathlon, placing 16th. The following year he exceeded the Finnish long jump record with a jump of 7.42 m, but due to wind assistance that record could not be ratified.
At the 1930 Finnish Championships at Tampere he won the pentathlon with 4011 points, an unofficial world record. He also triumphed at that year's International University Games, scoring 3979 points to secure gold ahead of Latvia's Jānis Dimza. Tolamo's world record was broken the following year by javelin thrower Matti Sippala; however, with modern scoring tables Tolamo's score would have remained the record, and it eventually re-emerged as a national pentathlon best, only broken in 2007.
Tolamo legitimately broke the Finnish long jump record in 1933 in a dual meet between Finland and Norway, jumping 7.46 m. At that year's International University Games he won silver in the long jump and bronze in the pentathlon. He broke his own national long jump record in September 1934, in another dual meet (between Finland and Germany); he jumped 7.51 m and defeated both Wilhelm Leichum, who had won the European championship the previous week, and future Olympic silver medalist Luz Long. That jump remained the Finnish record until 1954, when Jorma Valkama broke it.
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