Finland’s top wrestlers were asked their opinion about the added value of hiring a foreign head coach.
The Finnish national wrestling team’s visit to the European Championships in Zagreb in April did not leave any great stories for posterity. All five men lost their only match by a combined score of 11–43, and the only female representative suffered a sweep loss in the opening round.
Last year’s Greco-Roman wrestling EC medals were missing from the team Arvi Savolainen and Konsta Mäenpääand a two-time EC medalist in the 97-kg category Elias Kuosmanen competed in the heaviest i.e. 130 kg weight class. Olympic places to Paris for 2024 will start to be allocated in September at the World Championships in Belgrade.
Shortly after the European Championships final, all Finnish representative level wrestlers received electronically a confidential survey related to national team activities. It was prepared by a close partner of the Olympic Committee’s top sports unit, the Kihu Research Center for Racing and Top Sports. One national team wrestler says that the content and timing of the survey caused a lot of confusion.
Since it is a confidential, not a public inquiry, he did not want to comment on the matter to Urheilu by name.
The issue of hiring a foreign head coach was particularly surprising. The athletes were asked for their opinion on whether a foreign coach would bring significant added value to national team training.
The responsible coaches of Greco-Roman wrestling are Juha Lappalainen in Helsinki and Marko Yli-Hannuksela On the Kuortane. The contracts of responsible coaches of Olympic sports are typically Olympic-sized. In total, Painiliito has seven coaches working at the national team level.
A total of 16 questions
Each question could be evaluated on a 5-point scale, the extremes of which were completely agree and completely disagree. Urheilu has familiarized itself with a battery containing a total of 16 questions focusing on the quality of national team activities.
– It is very difficult to understand the timing and purpose of such a survey. Since 2018, there have been (men’s) prestigious medals or Olympic places almost every year. Now there was one big Ohiveto in a situation where last year’s prize medalists were completely missing from the team. This is not the right time to start asking such questions, says the representative wrestler.
He says he fully trusts the professionalism of both Lappalainen and Yli-Hannuksela.
Executive director of the wrestling association Pasi Sarkkinen says that the union commissioned a survey from Kihu. The timing was no accident.
Anonymous survey
– Maybe not so much the result of the European Championship as such, but the way in which it ended. We asked Kihu to make such an anonymized survey in which the national team’s activities are extensively reviewed.
Sarkkinen emphasized that the question about the foreign coach does not mean that the current head coaches are changing weeks.
– However, it is clear that the Wrestling Federation must also be on the map about what kind of expertise could be available internationally. It’s quiet now, when the direction of Russia and Belarus is of course blocked and the hard-hitting experts on different sides are stuck due to the proximity of the Olympic Games in Paris.
Finland’s previous foreign head coach was Estonian Henn Polluste in the 1990’s. After this, at least a Swede has been negotiated for the position Hans MylläriPolish By Ryszard Swieradin and Bulgarian I’m standing by Dobrev with, but a Finnish candidate has been selected.
– The fact is that although we have good wrestling coaches, the whole is a product of a very Finnish school of thought Veli-Karri from Finland except, Sarkkinen states.
In recent years, Suominen made an impact in St. Petersburg for a long time as an active wrestler and also studied coaching in the city.