Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Mikkeli, Eastern Finland Regional State Administrative Agency, Finland
About Mikko Kolehmainen
- Mikko Yrjö Ilmari Kolehmainen (born 18 August 1964 in Mikkeli) is a Finnish sprint canoer who competed from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.
- Competing in four Summer Olympics, he won the gold medal in the K-1 500 m event at Barcelona in 1992.
- Kolehmainen's victory was Finland's only gold medal at those games. By now established as Finland's strongest kayak sprinter, he concentrated in the K-1 500 m discipline.
- Although a respected competitor at international regattas he never really threatened the top paddlers for the major prizes.
- At the 1991 World Championships in Paris he finished a creditable seventh. It was therefore a major shock when, at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, he won the K-1 500 m gold medal.
- His victory over reigning champion Zsolt Gyulay of Hungary gave Finland their only gold medal of an otherwise disappointing Games. A year later he showed that his Barcelona performance was no fluke by winning the world championship K-1 500 m title in Copenhagen.
- At his farewell Olympics, in Atlanta in 1996 he finished in seventh place, and carried the flag at the opening ceremony.
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