Reetta Hurske will soon be the only one of Finland’s best female speed skaters without her own biography. It says more about this time than Reetta Hurskee, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen sports reporter
18:00•Updated 18:10
Now everything has been seen.
I will admit frankly that this was my first reaction when WSOY for a while then said he was publishing a hurdler Lotta Haralan biography of Ylešte known Milla Madetojan as written.
The news meant that among the best female sprinters in the history of Finnish athletics, the most successful internationally and the fastest in statistics, i.e. Retta Pious will soon be the only one whose life has not been compiled between the covers or the sweet chords of an audiobook.
Annimari Korte has got his, and Nooralotta from Nezir there is a project on fire.
When the biggest athletes related titles arise from podcast conversations about intimate issues with a friend who has ended his sports career, from there, in my limited middle-aged world of thought, I no longer get up to compete in big arenas about things that can be taken seriously.
I tried to think Tero Pitkämäki and Kimmo Kinnu face to face opening up about their intimate lives in the podcast jungle. Nothing came of it.
Came on May 11th
May 11th came and Espoo Liikkuu Games at the Leppävaara stadium. Harala testified that the signatory and his thoughts were wrong all along.
The time of 12.64, which was born in a slightly too strong tailwind, is not statistically valid, but no Finn has stopped the timing cell in a shorter time than that. A tough level of sports, the attention economy and the social media business walk hand in hand in Harala.
He will certainly represent Finland at the European Championships in Rome and very likely at the Olympic Games in Paris; he confirmed the World Championship status of outdoor tracks already last summer in Budapest.
If someone had predicted this in 2022 – when the athlete already turned 30 – not many would have believed this oracle. Behind him were two entire seasons without competition due to a stress fracture of the tibia, and behind him was a mild but traumatic doping violation, which the athlete survived with mild consequences, mirroring the precedents. We will read more about this in the spring of 2025.
Historic performance
Harala’s progress to this point has even required a historic performance on a Finnish scale. When the age had accumulated to 31 years, the 13 seconds considered as an international driver’s license in the sport had not gone below. Kortte’s situation was the same, but he seemed to start again the career he had already ended. Harala beat his head against the wall for years.
He clearly didn’t squint his nose at the always greener grass peeking behind the fence: the data service Tilastopaja finds 10 different coaches for Harala in the past 13 years.
Now it seems that it wouldn’t have been worth it at all to go fishing further out to sea. Harala prepares his own training program, and his life partner is the most important support pillar in the whole of top sports.
Few people remember that Harala ran at the age of 17 in the World Youth Championship and at the age of 21 in the European Youth Championship final. On the talent line, he was not exactly in the same place as Viivi Lehikoinen or Ella Räsänenbut not hopelessly far away either.
The opposite happened
But in the same way that Finland’s 2000s prize competition winners – by Mikaela Ingberg, Tero Pitkämäki, Antti Ruuskanen, Ari Mannion, Arsi Harjun, Tommi Evilän or Jukka Keskisalon – the development has been strong in the 22-year-old series, the opposite happened to Harala.
Few people would have managed to get to this point, and it is appropriate to ask whether the tenacious and respectable investment would have been possible at all without the social media dimension that Harala has turned into significant income, which is shunned by sports puritans like me. Hardly.
On some level, Harala’s story reminds me of a javelin thrower who got into a cycle of injuries after his excellent debut championships, otherwise of course representing a slightly different athlete profile Lassi Etelätalo.
Her career culminated in an EC medal in 2022. Back then, it was hard to believe that Lotta Harala and the EC final less than two years later would be mentioned in the same sentence.