The next take is Petter Kukkonen from the book Pettymysen anatomia (Docendo) to be published today. The events take place in the early 1990s in Herttoniemi, Helsinki, where the most famous ski jumping hills in the capital region are located. It is evening, and the teenagers Kukkonen and Sampa Lajunen and Kukkonen’s father Tapio Kukkonen.
However, due to the late evening, no representatives of the organizing body could be seen, but the rainy summer evening offered an opportunity to jump, when the plastics on the downhill slope remained wet and therefore slippery. We walked straight to the tower of the smallest ski jumping hill, Samppa, my father and I, and Tapio didn’t realize the tip to check the condition of the downhill, he would only wave his hand to signal that the hill was free.
Sampa rushed from the mark and jumped, but from the corner he shouted that I shouldn’t follow him because a steel halter had been drawn across the downhill. It was the same rune, albeit on the side of a small hill, where a girl who climbed down on a stick died a couple of decades later, and the incident was widely reported.
In an interview with Urheilu, Kukkonen elaborates that the cable was pulled to the downhill slope at 15 meters.
Although the small hill of Herttoniemi is only 20 meters in size, the speed on the downhill slope is about 40 kilometers per hour. The cable was in the middle of the slope at a height of a few tens of centimeters.
– The legs would definitely have been broken, and Finnish Olympic history would probably have looked a little different, Kukkonen refers to Lajusi, who won three Olympic golds and two silvers.
– When I was younger (two years difference in age), I probably wouldn’t have been able to jump as far as Samppa, so it might have been bad for me.
Kukkonen says that the young men’s enthusiasm for skydiving didn’t stop after the rope snapped, but the two tried to break the obstacle that ruined their plans – without success.
Attitudinal climate was different 30 years ago when it comes to, for example, exercise and traffic safety.
– Sampa’s father With the tribe was once an old Mersu ambulance from the 90s. He was a doctor who had an ambulance at his disposal, which of course did not have any flashing lights, but was made for normal use.
– When we arrived at the race venue, we had already put on our jumping boots on the way in the back of the car. Once there, all you had to do was open the doors and attack the hill, recalls Kukkonen, who won the junior world championship in 2000.
Counterforce to heroic deeds
The anatomy of disappointment is a work in which Kukkonen opens up his experiences in his straightforward style Ilkka Herolan from the World Championship silver won in 2021 to the death of his father.
Tapio Kukkonen died of brain cancer during the Ruka World Cup in November 2018.
I sat on the side of the jumping hill, covered by the huge wind nets, and the tears flowed like a torrent. Father was dead. He was gone, for good, in heaven—or somewhere. Now it happened. Relief for father, great sadness for loved ones. Father’s presence, hanging on to life, even muted, had felt somehow comforting, as if the family was still together. Instead, the painful passing away was final. It was a decision and a transition. Love only showed its depth at the moment of death, I remembered someone wise saying.
In his book, Kukkonen reflects several times on what kind of relationship he has with winning and where the limit of the level of requirements is.
In the World Cup, there are 50 participants on the line in each race, of which only one can win and the other two get to bask on the podium.
These places are often the measuring stick of success in elite sports, whether it is the athlete himself, his coach, the media or the audience. Three athletes out of 50 means six percent.
– Succeeding in elite sports is extremely unlikely. It has defined my own thinking too much. There has been a kind of compulsion in the background. On the other hand, you also have to be successful in elite sports.
– How much can an athlete be pushed forward so that the athlete’s psyche does not break? Nowadays, coaching is challenging. Before, it was much more top-down, but now there are many more influencing factors, says Kukkonen.