WINTER OLYMPICS:FINNISH MEDIA rounded on the country's athletes yesterday for their performance at the Vancouver Olympics where the sports-mad country lags Australia in medals and could be facing its worst-ever performance.

“Olympic Fiasco,” tabloid Ilta-Sanomat printed on its front page after a weekend of woes, including only an 18th place finish in the large hill ski jump and the men’s cross-country skiing 30km pursuit where three Finns did not even finish the race. Later, their ice hockey team crashed to Nordic arch rivals Sweden 3-0.

“Finland has fallen flat on its face at the Vancouver Olympics,” regional daily Turun Sanomat wrote. “You can even speak of a catastrophe.” With only a silver medal so far in men’s halfpipe snowboarding, some papers pondered if Vancouver’s return would fall below a three-medal performance at Lake Placid in 1932 and become Finland’s worst-ever Winter Olympics.

In a country where Matti Nykanen remains a national icon despite his long-running personal problems, Finns have been especially hit hard by the poor ski jumping performance. Two jumpers have been disqualified due to oversized ski suits, medal hope Janne Ahonen withdrew injured from Saturday’s large hill event, and then Matti Hautamaki’s botched second jump in the event took him to a 26th place finish from third after his first jump.