The agreement between the federation and the athletes allows the athletes to be sanctioned for several things. Delay The trip to China could have been expensive for Lehikoinen, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen Sports journalist
When he climbed to the European elite in the 400-meter hurdles Viivi Lehikoinen decided to skip the Sweden match and compete in Xiamen, China In the Diamond League competition, he also revealed himself as a confident athlete.
Lehikoinen was most obviously sure that he would take the win in a tough competition and acknowledge the same 9,000 euros reward than Wilma Murtowhen in July in London he won the competition on the tour.
Of course, Lehikoinen already had second place in the Diamond League competition from Lausanne, but the above should not be taken too seriously.
9,000 euros is still a suitable and symbolic amount of money in this context. As a prestigious competition finalist, Lehikoinen belongs to the highest athlete caste of the Finnish Sports Federation. He gets so much training support per year that it can be calculated to be around 20,000 euros.
Every representative level athlete signs an athlete contract with the Sports Confederation each year, which lists the rights and obligations of the parties. They typically deal with sponsor visibility and anti-doping activities, but also the amount of coaching support and competition.
An important source of income
In the athletes’ contract, there is a certain number of so-called mandatory competitions, in which athletes must participate if they do not have a recent medical certificate of injury or illness.
The Swedish national match is defined as the noble category of mandatory competitions, which is the most important source of income for the Sports Federation in Finland, i.e. every other year. The income is used to finance, among other things, elite sports activities. It is important for the results of the match that both countries bring their best athletes.
Lehikoinen did not ask the opinions of the association when he agreed to compete in China and not in Stockholm. His camp was very open on social media about the fact that now was the time to put one’s own career before collective action. Of course, the association then blessed Lehikoinen’s trip, as if by necessity, and in a way in hindsight.
Points for honesty and healthy selfishness. Hardly Even Armand Duplantiska In front of the Swedish confederations, he was downright rude when he announced last year that the match against Finland’s staves would be missed.
In Urheilu’s Lehikoinen story on Wednesday, everything was nice and rosy, but behind the scenes, the issue is being talked about with a different tone of voice.
Let’s go back to this sum of 9,000 euros. If the Sports Confederation had wanted to push the situation with Lehikoinen to the end, so to speak, it could have tried to charge him approximately the amount of the winning pot of that competition. The current athlete contract states: the sanction is either 50 percent of the coaching support or at least 5,000 euros.
Coffin nails
This season, the clauses of the athletes’ contract will no longer be able to harm Lehikoinen’s success in prestigious competitions, but Top for Raitase they were the final nails in the coffin.
The man was practically forced under the threat of monetary sanctions to Poland for the EC team championships, mandatory races, on June 23, even though all the load meters of the European champion looked bright red. Coach Janne Ukonmaanahon the stock was planted flat. The episode does not increase the duo’s confidence in the umbrella organization.
The javelin heroes of yesteryear met with a team competition order in hand to march to their trusted doctor, but Raitanen didn’t go for this. At the World Championships in Budapest, he appeared mostly as a shadow.
If the federation really started charging its athletes for such example cases in some situation, we could come across an interesting issue of equality.
For doping violations, a sanction of up to 50,000 euros has been stipulated in the athletes’ contract. A fencer Lotta Harala was completely freed from it by the decision of the board of the union. Why should anyone else pay anything then?
Harala escaped financial sanctions because the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Board deemed the violation unintentional.
According to Urheilu’s information, the sharpest head of the federation and the athletes will sit down in the beginning of autumn to plan a new contract model, which would enslave the athletes more mercifully in critical situations, but would take the interests of the federation into account. I’d like to be a fly on the roof.
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