Sailing is one of the so-called priority sports of the Finnish Olympic Committee from one Olympic event to another. For the 2023–2024 Olympic season, the top sports unit supported the sport with 340,000 euros, and Finland received no less than five boats from the qualifying system for the Marseille regatta.
Medal expectations were mainly focused on the Nacra class, where Sinem Kurtbay and Central axis have at their best achieved a World Cup and European Championship medal. The result of Finland’s best boat team in the Mediterranean was 7th place. For other athletes, the level of demands of the Olympic regatta turned out to be far too tough from the point of view of top positions and medal starts.
The sailing team was led by the sport manager of the elite sports unit in Marseille Toni Roponen. But when the umbrella organization Suomen Purjehdus ja Veneily ry and the Olympic Committee later this autumn want to hear what went wrong at the most important moment, the report is written by a rather surprising name.
SPV announced on September 4 that it had recruited an Estonian sports psychologist as its coaching director Robert Päkkin38. He worked in the Marseille Olympic project for sailors as a psychological coaching specialist for about 2.5 years. Päkk will join the national sailing team from the Olympic Committee’s psychological coaching specialist position.
– A brilliant choice, commented Roponen on the recruitment of his long-term partner.
Completely Finnish
Although Päkk is not a Finnish citizen, his long Finnish background with perfect language skills is symbolized by SPV’s executive director, who led the recruitment process by Jan Thorström the example given.
When Thorström tells Urheilu that foreign applicants have also shown interest in the job, he states separately that the European sprint finalist Hanna-Maari Päkkin the husband was a completely Finnish applicant in the eyes of the organization.
SPV did not require applicants to have strong knowledge of the sport. Päkk says that he learned a lot about the skillful, mental and physical demands of competitive sailing during the Olympics that ended.
– I had to work with the athletes mainly in Helsinki Urhea, but suddenly I realized that they are all the time in camp abroad. I then traveled behind, because the trust required by psychic coaching cannot be built remotely.
The double master, who studied sports psychology, emphasizes that he is specifically the leader of the coaching, not the coach of the boat associations. The internationality of the work, both for colleagues and the operating environment, was a big motive for the global citizen to apply for a job.
Four of Finland’s five Olympic boat teams were coached by a foreigner, and the next Olympic regatta in Los Angeles will require a large presence in the sea and weather conditions of California in the next few years.
Gathering of the intelligentsia
– I admit that the choice was a surprise, a positive surprise, Päkk tells Urheilu in Helsinki’s Lauttasaari at the port of the legendary Helsingfors Segelklubb, or HSK.
Another big motive for applying was the sport’s reputation as a kind of gathering race for smart people. Finland’s recent top sailors, for example Wind Petäjä Siren is an architect Silja Frost (formerly Leafy) doctor, Sari Multala master of economics, Silja Kanerva jurist, Tuula Tenkanen Master of Science in Engineering, Tapio Nirkko a master’s degree in exercise science and so on.
Of course, such a milieu stimulates the academically talented head coach as well.
– The sailing family and the sport itself made an impression during the time I was involved. Athletes are intelligent, pleasant, straightforward and very goal-oriented people. The distinctive feature of sailing, i.e. the frequent protests and counter-protests and their handling, requires a strong moral backbone and excellent argumentative skills in front of the judges’ council.
For example Veera Hokan and by Ronja Grönblom one of the culmination points of the olympic regatta in the 49er FX class was the protest made by the USA and the recovery of Finland’s counter-protest from handling as a boomerang.
– The results in Marseille are explained by the same things as in top sports in general: preparation, conditions, health, also luck. Now, for example, we were in conditions where there was either too much or too little wind for our athletes. I don’t want to emphasize any single thing.
Tapper or Uusitalo?
selected for the Ilca 7 class Kaarle Tapper’s already the third Olympic regatta was missed due to illness. Competition selection during Tapper’s time was generally raised after the youngster Valtteri Uusitalo won the class EC gold in Greece in February.
Uusitalo beat, among other things, Hungary, which finished fourth in the Olympic Games Jonatan Vadnain and Ireland, which came tenth by Finn Lynch.
Päkki didn’t have a part or lottery for Finland’s Olympic selections this time.
– On a general level, American research has found a clear correlation between early Olympic selections and Olympic success. Uusitalo is very talented and a potential future success.
Problematic situations also arose in Marseille Monika Mikkolan with, largely due to the own choices of the athlete who sailed in the Ilca 6 class.
At first, the athlete was surprised by the fact that he couldn’t even park his own car in the Olympic village. After that, the pain was compounded by the fact that the break in cooperation between the athlete and the Norwegian team on Mikkola’s own initiative caused major maintenance problems during the competitions.
– The problems were caused by the responsibility program of the umbrella organization World Sailing and the IOC, which for environmental reasons severely limited the number of the countries’ own service boats in the track area during the Olympic Games. There wouldn’t have been any problems in any of the other competitions, says Päkk.
Strict commitment
Sailing is a special sport to the extent that, due to, among other things, extensive camping and competing abroad, the boat crews commit strongly and early to the next Olympics. This also applies to coaches and financiers. Päkk starts assembling this puzzle as soon as the wash on October 7 starts.
– 100% commitment obviously means certain things, for example in terms of family life. For many, it is a place of great and difficult consideration.
One important financier is the Olympic Committee. In the sports rush of the end of autumn, the position of sailing as a priority sport for millionaires is defended in front of the elite sports unit by coaching director Päkk.
It is not a matter of hype, because even though sailing carries the profile of a successful sport, in this millennium Finland has only been at Olympic medal level in Sydney 2000 and Weymouth 2012.
In the past 20 years, 18 medals from the Olympic, World or European Championships have been achieved in various Olympic categories in Finland, but in the big picture, in the sport, Olympic success is mostly valued.
– We still have strong and fresh evidence that our best athletes are among the best internationally. We do very good research work around the sport. The level of demand is determined by global competition, in which we are still very much involved, Päkk lists.
Päkk took note of the four athletes’ anonymous protest letter published in Ilta-Sanom after the Paris Olympics. He emphasizes that he does not know the identity of the authors of the letter or whether a sailor or sailors were involved. The athletes talked about, for example, the loneliness caused by the competition village environment, anxiety and the apathetic behavior of the competition directors.
– The Olympic Village can be a tough place when an athlete realizes he is in an environment where even a Finnish record is not enough.
Päkk is by no means the first Estonian coaching director in Finnish sailing. Märt Loogin the head coach’s season 1995–2004 even brought the previous Olympic gold – in Sydney 2000 by Thomas Johanson and Jyrki Järven the strongest in the 49er class.
The previous Olympic gold was won again in Päkki’s birth country in the Soviet Union, when Tallinn was organized by Finnjolla sailors Esko for Rechardt of the golden Olympic regatta of the Moscow Games 1980.
Also father at the Paris Games
However, Robert Päkki’s family did not do sailing, but the main focus was on another traditional Olympic sport, in which the masses become somewhat interested every four years for a couple of weeks.
Father of a sports psychologist Peeter Päkk was a member of the Soviet national shotgun team for 12 years as a skeet shooter, one of the few from the Baltics. In the tight selection situations of prestigious competitions, minority nationality in a “happy” Soviet family was never an advantage. At the Barcelona Olympic Games 1992 Peeter Päkk represented already independent Estonia.
Father Päkk also had accreditation around his neck at the Olympic Games in Paris, although hundreds of kilometers away from his offspring at the Chateauroux shooting center. He was part of the Estonian delegation as a skeet shooter by Peeter Jürisson as a coach.
Thanks to his father’s extensive sports and coaching career, Finland was a familiar country to the boy long before he permanently settled in the country, first as a student and later in working life.
At the Tokyo Olympics 2021 Eetu Kallioinen fourth place on the skeet track was considered a downright sensation, but Päkk, who was part of the race team as an expert in psychological coaching, was not surprised at all.
– I had been doing an internship at the Shooting Sports Association when, for example, Eetu and Lari Pesonen (another Tokyo skeet representative) were juniors. At that time, I did a study related to my specialty about possible distractions in shooting sports before the competition. It is still the only research in its field in shooting.
The traditional expert
However, in his childhood home in Tartu, the boy Päkk did not answer the call of clay pucks, instead he ended up with Estonia’s most successful winter sport at the time, namely cross-country skiing, in the ranks of the Tartu Ski Club. The better way of progressing was traditional, as well as that of the star skiers of the time Andrus Veerpalun and Jaak Maen.
Despite the temptations, Robert Päkk, who belonged to Estonia’s junior elite, did not move to attend a sports school 40 kilometers away from his home, in the skiing mecca of Otepää. He preferred to attend a highly prestigious high school in Tartu.
The spark for sports psychology was finally ignited as a sports scholarship at the Alaskan University of Fairbanks. In 2015, Päkk returned to the USA, when his current wife joined the famous, later also the recent Olympic champion of the hundred Noah Lyles having guided by Lance Brauman coaching staff in Florida.
The wife, who specializes in sports psychology and studied for a master’s degree in sports science in Jyväskylä, also works as an expert in psychological coaching, also in Finnish competition teams.
The scenes collapsed
Before the period in Florida, Robert Päkk worked as a coaching manager in his home country’s ski association. In 2011, national hero, four-time prize winner Veerpalu received a long doping competition ban, which was later overturned in the appeal process.
In 2019, at the 2019 Seefeld World Championships, the skiing scenes built on Estonia’s blood doping collapsed once and for all, and the country’s greatest influence on the sport, the long-time head coach, also went down with the wash. Mati Alaver.
Päkk followed the news from Finland; it was about the human tragedy of people he knew very well.
– Yes, it was a bit of a surprise, but in the big picture, the so-called good timing of Estonia’s top athletes wanted to succeed exceptionally well in the prestigious competitions, he says with a smile.
Even though cross-country skiing and racing sailing might not suddenly seem to have commonalities, Toni Roponen quickly finds them:
– The year has to be timed precisely. In both, we are at the mercy of circumstances. You have to train taking the upcoming competition conditions into account. Logistical issues are highlighted, not to mention equipment. We are easily away from home 180 days a year.