Let’s start with a fact. I am officially 170 centimeters tall. I don’t know what that is in feet and inches, but whatever it is, it’s below the average in most Western countries. It is the average height for males in Brazil, and above the average in countries like Bahrain, Chile, and Gambia. In Indonesia, where the average height for males is 1.58, I would be considered tall.
(Seriously, Google tells me I’m 5 feet and 6 inches and fifty-nine-sixty-fourths tall.)
Now, if you want to get really technical about it, I think I’m 169.47 centimeters tall, but that does get rounded up, right, even if my high school math teacher wouldn’t round my grade point average from 9.47 to 10 before I pointed it out to him. (For you non-Finns out there, the scale is from 4 to 10, with 10 being genius-ish).
There are 400 players in the hockey world championships, and most of them are at least 180 cm tall. Canada, for example, doesn’t have any players shorter than that. They have seven players that are over 190 cm, which means that they could walk next to me, put their arm around me – so my head is in their armpit – and yell, “hey, look at this, I can use Risto as a crutch”. That always seemed to crack up some of my schoolmates.
But even among all the big boys, there has got to be one who’s just the tallest. He’s Slovakia’s Zdeno Chara who’s 205 centimeters in his socks, and 215 cm with his skates on. My arm is, what, half a meter long, but since my shoulders are 140 centimeters from the floor, even if I raise my arm straight up, and stand on my tiptoes, I could reach the top of Chara’s head, when he’s wearing sneakers, but not his helmet if he’s wearing skates.
Fortunately for me, his mouth is not that high up, so I can get my tape recorder in position when I interview him. Also, he likes to go to the dressing room and change before meeting the media, which makes it a little easier.
I’m trying to convince a colleague of mine to do the old “long-coat-over-two-guys-with-one-sitting-on-the-other’s-shoulders” trick the next time we interview Zdeno, who, and this can’t be stressed enough, is a very nice man, a good sport, and a great hockey player.
Or I might just interview Italy’s Vincent Rocco who’s 166 centimeters tall. I won’t be wearing my Timberlands for that.