(ATR) Matti Nykanen was one of the giants of ski jumping, winning foue gold medals at two Winter Olympics.
Nykanen died over the weekend, just hours after performing as a singer in a rock band at a Helsinki club. No cause of death is reported but he had suffered from diabetes.
He dominated the competition in his first Olympics, the 1984 Winter Games in Sarajevo, winning the gold medal by a record score.
Four years later in Calgary, Nykanen became the first jumper to win the gold medal on both hills in the Olympics.
But a year before Calgary, Nykanen was sent home from the Four Hills competition for bad behavior and alcohol use.
The incident was part of the tableau of a personal life that sometimes brought him as much notoriety as the acclaim he won as an athlete.
He went to prison two times for violent attacks, one of them against his wife. Nykanen was married six times, two times to the same women.
After his ski career ended in 1991, he went into entertainment as a singer and for a short time as a stripper.
"I don’t have a private life, but I do indeed have a bad image," he wrote in his biography.
Reported by Ed Hula.
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