Leo pekka tahti biography

Leo-Pekka Tähti Leo-Pekka Tähti (born 22 June 1983 in Pori, Finland) is a Finnish athlete and Paralympian competing mainly in category T54 sprint events.
Leo-Pekka Tähti is a Finnish athlete and Paralympian competing mainly in category T54 sprint events.
He is the only athlete in Paralympic history to have won three gold medals in a row in the 100m T54 – winning in Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and.

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Paralympian Leo-Pekka Tähti breaks down building accessibility barriers

Published 03-03-2021

Nothing stopped Paralympian gold medalist Leo-Pekka Tähti from becoming the world’s fastest wheelchair racer. The same passion drives him to fight barriers that stand in the way of equality – such as buildings without elevators.

Leo-Pekka Tähti, 37, was born with a congenital spinal cord injury that left him unable to use his legs. A love of competition drove him to take up wheelchair racing at age 15, and today he is celebrated as a Finnish sporting legend, unbeatable for the past 16 years in the 100m dash.

Tähti is also a respected spokesman for equality. Over the past decade he has noted a genuine improvement in attitudes towards people with disabilities. “Perhaps the clearest sign of a shift was when I was chosen as Finland’s Athlete of the Year in 2016.”

While many barriers to equality are being eroded, there are still surprisingly many physical obstacles that cause daily he

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Finland's Tahti Keeps on Rolling

“If you miss your start, you’ve probably lost a medal by then."

Leo Pekka Tahti recalls a particular national event back home in Finland when the front of his wheelchair just fell off mid-race.

The Finnish 100m T54 world-record holder and three-time Paralympic champion in the event remembers it like it was yesterday.

“It just crushed in the front part,” Tahti said. “It just cut off 20m before the finish line in a competition.”

Yet somehow, he still won that race.

And he did so with a time of 14.20, which was a hundredth of a second better than his gold-medal winning race at the IPC Athletics European Championships on Monday (25 June) in Stadskanaal, the Netherlands.

But with his win this week came a European title.

Tahti beat the Netherlands’ Kenny van Weeghel and Germany’s Marc Schuh for the title in an event he deemed will be the second biggest competition of the year for him other than the London 2012 Paralympic Games, which he has already been selected to compete in.

The Finnish athlete, 29, has been on the wheelchair racing circu

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Paralympian Leo-Pekka Tähti scoops fourth Athlete of the Year award

Paralympian Leo-Pekka Tähti has been named Finland's Athlete of the Year for 2018.

It is Tähti's fourth time as athlete of the year having previously claimed the title in 2011, 2016, and 2017.

Thirty-five year-old Tähti won three medals at the European Athletics Championships in Berlin last summer, with gold medals in the 100-, 200- and 400-metre T54 sprints. He also won a silver medal in the 800-metre event.

”This is the best year of all time,” Tähti said at the Berlin competition.

In spite of his stellar accomplishments on the track it Tähti many years to be recognised as the country's Sports Personality of the Year, an honour he claimed in 2016.

Four years before finally winning that mantle, Tähti had won the highest number of votes for top spot after winning gold at the London Paralympics in 2012.

However he lost out in the total points count as 50 of Finland's 650 card-carrying sports reporters did not choose him in their list at all. Instead, windsurfer Tuuli Petäjä-Sirén was n