Paris Olympics on channels 26.7.–11.8. Go to the competition website here. You can find the entire program of the games here.
PARIS. Olympic swimming ended on Sunday in the La Defense swimming arena. The Finnish team that traveled to Paris was the size of two athletes. Matti Mattsson placed 18th in the 200m breaststroke and Ida Hulkko 26th in 100m breaststroke. Neither of them made it past the preliminaries.
The last time the balance of the Finnish team in Olympic swimming was weaker was in Melbourne in 1956.
– It doesn’t sound good, but the resources, training and atmosphere in Finnish swimming probably doesn’t deserve much better, a domestic swimming legend Antti Kasvio assessed to Urheilu on Wednesday.
Finnish swimmers have won five medals in Olympic history, the first two of which are from 1920 and Arvo Aaltonen handwriting. After that, the blue and white colors were not seen in the medal distribution of the five rings for 72 years, until Kasvio ended the streak in Barcelona in 1992.
Kasvio is known as an outspoken person. According to him, Finnish top swimming lives in a different reality compared to competing countries, not only in the amount of resources but also in social appreciation.
– If we want Finnish athletes to succeed, we need to create an atmosphere that encourages sports and give it money and high-quality training facilities. Now, a Finnish swimmer basically trains a little in the same way as the prime minister should go to a middle school canteen to work.
According to Kasvio, for example, training conditions in the capital region are far from optimal.
– The swimming pools are far too full. There are no rules of conduct, and if there are, they are neither enforced nor enforced. Fitness swimmers and hobbyists take up all the lanes, and clubs get far too little space.
Kasvio coaches his daughter Lunch Kasviota. The Olympic Committee supports the duo for afternoon practice on a track reserved separately from Matinkylä’s swimming pool.
– We have a track reserved for two hours at 2 p.m. It makes it very difficult to combine two practices and school every day. You always have to think about the second exercise, where you can do it and where you can connect the gym, Antti Kasvioi said.
– Even though we have our own track, there is always a big hassle around. In addition, fitness swimmers constantly complain loudly about how competitive swimmers take up so much space.
According to him, Finnish club activities currently do not adequately serve swimmers aiming for the top of the world, but the activity is driven by hobby.
Kasvio is worried that the results in Paris will also have an immediate impact on Uimaliitto.
– Now that the results were this bad, the rest of Uimaliito’s support also comes from top sports. At the same time, in other countries, the investment is only increased.
– Elsewhere, you don’t have to worry to the same extent as here, whether there is enough money for high-level competitions and training camps. For Finns, all these costs are paid out of their own pocket.
Kasviot makes 4–5 foreign camps a year, on top of which there are about seven competition trips outside of Finland.
– You can tell from that what this will cost our family, Kasvio was content to answer questions about the costs.
Operations abroad are at a different level
The head coach of the Olympic Swimming Center in Helsinki Matti Mäki admits that Finland’s top swimmers train in more modest conditions than, for example, Swedes. Mäki mentions Stockholm’s Eriksdalsbadet swimming center as an example.
– There is a ten-lane Vinsta (a full-size 50-meter pool) and a 14-lane 25-meter pool. The ten-lane Vinsta is always only used by clubs at the times specified for them, and at the most popular time of the day, half of the 25-meter pool is occupied, as I recall. Big swimming areas have their own pool at the top, says Mäki.
However, Mäki does not fully agree with Kasvio’s criticism of the limited space.
– I understand Antti’s view on the differences in swimming pool culture between countries. In the rest of the world, elite swimmers do not train at the same time as public swimmers. However, I don’t see this being the deciding factor.
The Olympic training center for elite swimming has been operating in the Mäkelänrinte swimming center and in Urhea, which is located next to it, since autumn 2021.
– In my opinion, we cannot go behind the fact that we have too little space in the result of this Olympics. For example, the Olympic training center in Mäkelänrinte has quite a lot of track space. Of course, it would be great if we had our own pool, but at the moment it is not possible in Finland, says Mäki.
Remember the model
Mäki has visited the Olympic training centers in Spain, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden to seek influences on the Finnish swimming system. There are also contacts in France and the Netherlands.
– In these, the everyday life of the athletes has been able to be built in an overall way much better than what we have in Finland.
He mentions the Dane as an example by Julie Klepp Jensenwho reached the semi-finals in Paris in the 50-meter freestyle.
Jensen, 24, is studying to become a doctor alongside his swimming career.
– A personal study plan has been tailored for him, so that swimming does not suffer at all. The same system is in Spain. Everything is done on swimming terms.
– In Urhea, it works well for us to combine studies with sports, but this is not the case everywhere. Some of the Finnish national team swimmers have clear attendance requirements at the courses. I understand that, but here we are giving an equalizer.
Hoping for additional resources
During the interview, Mäki emphasizes several times that he does not want to explain the Olympic result he has seen now with a lack of resources.
– I emphasize that I don’t want to go behind these things in the result and I don’t want to explain. However, when these things are being reviewed now, it is just a fact that we are working with really small resources.
According to Mäki, the swimmers training at the Olympic training center are in a good position in that Urhea’s expert services are available to them. However, it is difficult to replace certain things found in foreign colleagues in Helsinki’s Vallila.
– In the training centers I have visited abroad, the athletes have a package that includes 3-4 high-level camps or longer camps abroad. With us, all of this is out-of-pocket, the subsidies are very small, and collecting the money is largely the athlete’s responsibility.
According to Mäki, the domestic swimming community now has a place to look in the mirror. The domestic top of the sport has been the same and very narrow for a long time. Mäki hopes that in the future expertise and small resources would be concentrated in a few localities.
– We unquestionably failed at this Olympics, especially in that we were not able to raise the new generation to the Olympic level. However, we blow on each other’s coals and think about how we can do things better.
– You have to be able to gradually make the training tougher than the current one. It would be great if we could go camping, but there is no money for that right now. We have invested a lot in improving everyday training at the beginning of our training center. That work will continue. I feel we are going in the right direction. We have a long way to go. We have to earn our place in the limelight.