Ian O'Riordan meets the Olympic legend who puts his past glory down to rigorous training and strides clear of any talk of blood doping

Blood doping. Ask him about blood doping. You can't go to Finland to meet Lasse Viren without asking him about blood doping. If not, at least ask about the reindeer milk. But blood doping, that has always been the talk about Viren. Even before the talk of him being such an incredibly talented runner. And still the one thing everybody wants to know about Viren is what he has to say about blood doping.

So to the large hallways of the Finnish parliament in Helsinki. Waiting for Viren, thinking about his four Olympic gold medals, that killer of a 5,000-10,000 double in 1972 and again in 1976. Thinking about what could have driven him to such greatness. Thinking about blood doping.

He comes sweeping around the corner, and skips quickly down the marble steps like they don't exist. It's him. Straightaway he looks like a man who could still run 10,000 metres in under 28 minutes. He's still unbelievably lean and at age 55 appears every bit as fit as when beating all the great distance runners of his generation.

Up close, you spot a few grey hairs on his neatly trimmed beard, but his face still breathes youthfulness. So does his smile. He points the way down another set of steps and moves so smoothly and deceptively fast that you're almost running to keep up.

Suddenly, there's no reason at all to think about blood doping. Viren has the most perfect, natural-looking body type for a runner. What you call a true athletic freak.

There are a few reasons for this meeting. Next August the athletics World Championships return to the old Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, where they were first staged back in 1983. Viren had retired the year before, and then Finnish distance running went into rapid decline. The nation that produced the Flying Finns failed to win a gold medal in Athens for the first time in their Olympic history.

It was Viren who ended that golden era of distance running. It started back in 1912 with Hannes Kolehmainen (three gold medals), continued with Paavo Nurmi (seven gold) and Ville Ritola (four gold). Finland has won 49 Olympic gold medals in athletics, the fifth most successful nation ever, and came home from Athens without a medal in track or field.

So now they're hosting the second most important athletics event in the world, and they don't have any athlete to help sell it. "Only me," interrupts Viren, who is an honorary member of the organising committee. It sets the tone for a series of warm, jovial responses. Blood doping is drifting further off the agenda.

Maybe Viren should make a comeback then. He certainly looks like he could. "Ah no," he says, and draws another smile. "But Finland do have a few potential medal winners. What will happen I can't say, but we do still have some good javelin throwers, and also in the hammer.

"In the past I know Finland have always relied on distance runners. Of course, there isn't anyone at the moment. But we have some good potential in the 3,000 metres steeplechase, with two young athletes (Kim Bergdahl and Mikael Talasjoki). We'll have to see how much they improve.

"But in the 1970s all of European distance running was in good shape. So, of course, you can ask the question where are all the Finnish runners now, but you can ask the same question in France and Germany and even in Britain. I know Britain have some good sprinters, but they used to have good runners in every event from the 800 metres to the marathon. Not so much now."

And then, unprompted, he raises the issue of drugs: "You also had the situation in Athens with say the Hungarians, who looked so good in the qualifying rounds of the discus, but were then thrown out because of the drugs. Maybe they were taking the place of Finnish athletes that could have been in the finals."

When Viren won his second 5,000-metre gold medal in Montreal in 1976 several athletes who finished behind him made statements afterwards to the effect that Viren had won because of blood doping. Especially the two New Zealand athletes expected to win - Dick Quax, who took second, and Rod Dixon, who was fourth.

At the time, the press repeatedly grilled Viren about blood doping. His response was always enigmatic, and usually included talk of reindeer milk or 30-mile runs in the snow. Viren did drink a lot of milk while training in the snow, but it was not reindeer milk.

The first thing you need to know about blood doping is it wasn't made illegal in sport until 1986, and even then mostly because of the health risks. It's a messy business, involving the removing, storing and transporting of blood.

Essentially, the athlete has a quart or more of blood extracted before a major competition. This blood is frozen, while the athlete keeps training to rebuild the blood to its normal level. Then just prior to racing, red cells from the extracted blood are transfused back into the athlete, instantly increasing the body's haemoglobin level and oxygen-carrying abilities. In other words, instantly boosting endurance.

Scandinavia had helped pioneer the practice for winter sports, particularly cross-country skiing. It was very much in vogue in Finland at the time of Viren's arrival on the world stage, and that he only seemed to peak at the major competitions added fuel to the speculation that blood doping had to be part of his preparation.

Even though it was legal at the time, to some people it offered a clear and unfair advantage, while others reckoned it was merely a more scientific form of say altitude training, and simply used the body's own resources in a more productive manner.

Then, in 1986, scientists managed to produce a synthetic version of the hormone erythropoietin, the infamous EPO. Blood doping was almost simultaneously made redundant. EPO offered the same benefits with a single injection, but because of the synthetic means it was universally deemed unethical, and immediately banned.

We know that Finnish athletes blood doped. In 1980, Kaarlo Maaninka took third in the Olympic 5,000 metres, edging Eamonn Coghlan out of a medal. He later admitted to blood doping. In 1984, Martti Vainio took second in the Olympic 10,000 metres. Afterwards, he tested positive for steroids, the traces of which had remained in the blood he had replaced just before competing.

A few years back, Viren was offered $1 million by a German magazine to tell the truth about blood doping. Viren agreed to tell his story, but that it would explain why he didn't blood dope. The Germans called off the deal. Viren has never once even hinted there might be more to his story.

When he started running at 16, names like Nurmi and Ritola had already become a myth, but still relevant enough to inspire a youngster from the rural village of Myrskyla. At the time, Myrskyla had a church, a bank, and no streetlights.

It was covered in snow for almost half the year. Anyone who wanted to run in that environment needed to be incredibly motivated. Viren was.

In 1969, he set a Finnish junior 5,000-metre record of 14:17.0. To improve on that he was told he'd have to leave home, and accepted a scholarship to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. That proved a little too far from home, and he came back after a semester.

Instead, he put his faith in Rolf Haikkola, a former distance runner who had fallen for the training philosophy of the New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard. That meant one thing - high mileage. Viren took a job as a policeman in Myrskyla and began running over 100 miles a week.

In 1971, Helsinki hosted the European championships. The 21-year-old Viren finished seventh in the 5,000 metres, and immediately began training for the 1972 Olympics in Munich. He went altitude training in Kenya, unheard of at the time, and ran three times a day for three months.

"I would always emphasis the winter training," he says, "because you could never predict what would happen in the season after that. And I was a strong believer in training in the woods. The tranquillity of nature also creates mental strength. And when you run in the woods, you have to change rhythm to avoid roots, the same way that you have to be constantly alert in competitions."

People still think Viren arrived in Munich with no credentials. In fact, he started the summer by lowering the Finnish 5,000-metre record to 13:19.0, then ran a national 3,000-metre record of 7:43.2, and then a 27:52.4 for the 10,000 metres. He topped it off by running a two-mile world record just before the Olympics. Not exactly the sort of running you'd expect from an athlete in the middle of blood doping.

In Munich, Viren first won the 10,000m in a world record 27.38.4, despite being tripped and falling on the backstretch of the 12th lap. Later in the week he won the 5,000 metres in an Olympic record 13:26.4. Four days after that in Helsinki he ran a world record 13:16.4.

Four years later, in Montreal, it was more of the same. Injury had struck in the seasons in between, but he still won bronze in the European championships in 1974. To prepare for the Montreal Olympics he went back to Thompson Falls in Kenya, where at 7,000 feet he ran 180 miles a week. He carried the Finnish flag into Montreal's new Olympic stadium and defended both his 5,000 and 10,000-metre titles. On the last day he ran the marathon, his first, and finished fifth.

All four Olympic titles, he says, mean the same: "No, I don't think I can mention one above the other. I appreciate them all, and I would never talk about my greatest achievement. But I suppose the 5,000 metres in 1976 was probably the most satisfying race, and has the most memories for me. As a competition, for excitement, that race in Montreal was for sure the best. But if I were to put them all in some kind of order I would rate the first Olympic title and the last title as the best. Those two are special."

In 1994 Viren felt his four Olympic gold medals didn't feel so special, and he put them up for sale, asking $200,000 each. A lot people in Finland weren't impressed. One member of parliament said the medals belonged to the state.

Viren suggested the money would come in handy to educate his three sons. But all the time he seemed to be just teasing.

"Some of the things said about that were outrageous. It's not about selling medals, or having them on display. To me, they'd be just as good at the bottom of a lake."

Viren did make one last effort to win a fifth Olympic medal in Moscow in 1980. But it was always a struggle. He was first injured on a hunting trip, and again while training at altitude in Bogota, Colombia. But he still made it to Moscow, surprised as anyone at the stifling heat in the old Soviet capitol.

But he was trailed off in his 10,000-metre heat. With 200 metres remaining it seemed he wouldn't qualify, but the athlete in front of him hit the curb of the track and collapsed. It was John Treacy. Viren jumped over him and got the last qualifying spot.

In the final, he finished fifth behind Miruts Yifter after probably his bravest performance. A few days later, Viren ran the marathon and dropped out after nine miles.

"After Moscow I did want to retire, but I did compete a few times again in 1982. Then we had the World championships coming to Helsinki in 1983. But I just wasn't that eager, or that ambitious, to go for another championship. I felt my body was slowing down. And I would have needed a year and a half to get ready for it.

"But I wouldn't say I regret it. Sometimes it is in my mind, but it's not a big thing. In fact there's absolutely nothing about my career that I would have done differently. If I was starting out again I would do exactly the same things, exactly the same way."

Viren soon settled back into a normal life in Myrskyla, He was first hired by a Finnish bank to develop a youth training program, but his unyielding popularity led him into local politics. Then in 1999 he was elected as a member of the Conservative party to the Finnish parliament, and re-elected last year.

"My first role was with the forestry committee, but now I've moved into transport. That's more important to me now, and interesting. My father owned a haulage company, also my brother, and as a policeman in the community I was always dealing with traffic situations."

A short while later a buzzer sounds to announce the afternoon session of the Finnish parliament. At first Viren seems to ignore it. Suddenly he hops up and skips out the door. Gone in an instant, still with that unmistakable gait of a distance runner.

It's while thinking about his enduring greatness that you realise you never asked him about blood doping.

Athletics is history now for young Finns

The Finnish Sports Museum sits next to the old Olympic Stadium in Helsinki. It's jam-packed with some of the most important memorabilia in Olympic history. One of the seven gold medals won by Paavo Nurmi. All four gold medals won by ski jumper Matti Nykanen. A driving suit belonging to Mika Hakkinen is the only break in the long series of Olympic success stories.

By the end of the Athens Olympics last August, Finland had won a record low of just two medals. For the first time, none of them were gold. Marko Yli-Hannuksela took silver in the Greco-Roman wrestling, and Marko Kemppainen did likewise in the men's skeet shooting final.

Finland has a population of just over five million, with roughly the same pool of talent as Ireland. And they have exactly the same problems with Olympic sports, particularly athletics. Young people just aren't drawn to the sport anymore.

In a corner of the Sports Museum a television screen replays Finland's great Olympic moments. One of the highlights is watching Lasse Viren being tripped in the 10,000-metre final in 1972. The athlete who fell with him, Tunisia's Mohamed Gammoudi, stays stuck to the track while Viren immediately leaps back up. He catches up with the field and wins gold.

"That's 'sisu'," explains Jarkko Jarventaus, the London correspondent of Aamulehti. "It's a word which often describes the Finnish character. I suppose you could call it guts, not wanting to quit. But I don't know if Finnish sport has lost some sisu."

One of the most impressive buildings in Helsinki is the Hartwall Arena which houses the city's most important sporting facility - the ice hockey ring. The Jokers, the home team, nearly always attract sell-out crowds.

"Another of the most popular sports in Finland is baseball," says Jarventaus. "And, of course, soccer. But all the team sports are popular, and yes, I think athletics has suffered."

It's an identical situation to Ireland, where the GAA, soccer and rugby take the best young sporting talent. Finland also has a government-funded programme for high performance sports, but without the raw talent that will only go so far.

Before he went into national politics, Lasse Viren was doing some coaching. The national federation figured they'd be better off hiring a Kenyan, and gave the head coach position to Mike Kosgei.

"I never really aimed to be head coach," says Viren. "But that was like the death knell to my coaching ambitions. But there are so many other problems in athletics. I certainly think pace-making has helped ruin the sport. I know in the 1970s you would watch a race and usually didn't know who would win."

So with the World Championships returning to Helsinki in August there's a quiet acceptance that Finland won't win any gold medals, it's just the way it is now.