Happy Birthday Kimi! | Magazine Special

Here is the October special issue for Kimi’s birthday. A truly great effort by Suzan and the contribution of us fans, as a gift not only for fans all over the world but to the man we adore. With plenty of statistics and biographical information, a feature written by myself which you can have in text form below, and a brilliant fan picture collage, it is a keeper indeed. Enjoy!

Kimi Matias Raikkonen was born on the 17^th
October in the year of 1979, to Matti and Paula Raikkonen. Living their simple
lives in a tiny house among forests in Espoo, Finland,
their first son Rami now had a baby brother to play with in the back yard, in what
would become their first racing track. From racing in wooden carts, bicycles with
wobbly wheels and snow sledges made from their school bags, Rami and Kimi were
a fun loving pair of young brothers.

While father Matti worked hard shifts as a truck driver in
quarry transport and Paula as a clerk, Kimi touched anything with wheels and an
engine and left his mark. He wasn’t alone in discovering this burning flame
inside; his parents did everything they could, financially and morally, to help
Kimi grow and let nature take control of the gift within.

Kimi was six years old when he once went for a check up at
the doctors with mother Paula. While his mother and the doctor were speaking,
Kimi, in a games corner, began to distress himself and to get nervous. Immediately,
the doctor thought the child could be affected by disturbs of concentration,
even if it was only about toys. Instead Kimi, who loved riddles very much at those
times, had found a puzzle suited to his age that seemed to him too easy. So he
wanted another challenge- one for children aged 10-15. Being a little worried,
the nurse hesitated at the young wonder’s demand. At the end, Kimi obtained
what he wanted and quickly put the pieces in the right places with a gleaming smile.
Speaking to Paula, the doctor laughed: “For sure this boy doesn’t have
concentration problems”.

School wasn’t Kimi’s favourite thing to do as a child, but
he enjoyed the sport classes, and the more practical workshops such as
Mechanics. In anything he tried, Kimi always showed his true nature; a
competitor, and a mighty strong one:

“It’s difficult to play with Kimi, for example at ping pong.
If I play well, Kimi always must try to prevail, however”, says brother Rami
Raikkonen.

In typically Finnish nature, Kimi was always the shy boy and
perhaps still is. But his childhood friend Toni Vilander explains that beneath
this silent enigma is an energy, fierce and infinite.

“Sometimes you have to let Kimi win, because he does not
stop until he has won. This is with everything, from a bicycle trip and for a
tennis match”, says Toni, a racer himself in Super GT, who remains a close best
friend of Kimi.

Ice hockey has always been favourite sport of Kimi’s. He once
played in the Espoo Team. The stadium was located quite far from Espoo
and training for the juniors began at 7 o’clock
in the morning. Kimi never liked early mornings, and so he’d wake up with
clenched teeth. He still does!

“Once, while I was taking Kimi to the training, in the rear
seat he always told me that maybe it would be better to change sport and play
fencing instead. For sure fencers don’t have to play in the middle of the
night! He made me laugh so much that I was almost going off the road",
Paula says. “Kimi was the smallest boy of the team and despite that he was a
defending player. If he was not able to block opponents with other ways, he’d
throw himself to their feet, with obstinacy and toughness. Sometimes the coach was
worried about him and didn’t let Kimi play when the adversaries were too
dangerously big".

His taste of competition is the same of when he was a child.
Obstacles small or big, they’ve never stopped little Kimi from growing into one
of the best sportsmen in the world. Being the fastest driver is Kimi’s passion,
a title he’s successfully proven with entering Formula One so soon, even before
he could even claim the Super License. After the struggles that would
inevitably come and go, in 2007 he reached his dream of becoming Formula One
World Champion on 21^st October, the very month he was brought into
the world.

Nothing could stop Kimi’s desire from growing; it was as if he
was born only to win. The journey had been long and hard, but it took a lot of
support from his family, and managers Steve and David Robertson, to be able to
reach the expensive and difficult world championships, for which he’s ever
grateful. And each year we witness this phenomenon, which grew up in the middle
of the snowy forests in Espoo.

In the autumn month of October where coloured leaves fall

A frosted leaf evergreen, that keeps flying in the wind

A name that skies afar softly call

Kimi Matias Raikkonen, whispering in the wind.