Leo Ilmo HONKALA

As a 19-year-old, Leo Honkala surprised everyone by winning a bronze medal in Greco-Roman flyweight wrestling at the 1952 Olympics. Those Olympics were also his only major international tournament appearance, as the rest of his career was hampered by injuries. In 1953 Honkala injured his shoulder for the first time and, after injuring it twice more, was forced to retire from wrestling in 1956, after winning his only Finnish title in Greco-Roman flyweight that year. Following his retirement, Honkala worked as a policeman but, at the end of the 1960s, moved to Sweden. In 1974 he started work as a coach with the Swedish national wrestling team and, from 1980-85, was head coach of the Swedish national team. In Sweden Honkala also took up powerlifting and competed successfully in various master tournaments in that event but, at the 2006 European Masters Championships, while competing in M73 class, Honkala failed a drug test, which caught him using EPO, and was banned from that sport.