Krista Pärmäkoski had lunch as usual in the restaurant of the hotel complex located below the Val Senales glacier in northern Italy in October 2019.
In this place, he had attended a training camp with the cross country team almost every year for a long time. Now, however, something was different. Pärmäkoski noticed that the other national team women did not like her presence at the glacier camp, let alone at the dinner table.
This is how Pärmäkoski recalls the tense atmosphere in his biography Avoin (lit. Laura Arffmancust. Gummerus):
Krista felt that she did not belong, and the other athletes of the national team also seemed to have a strong opinion. Krista felt that, especially during shared meals, she would have liked to be somewhere completely different. The atmosphere seemed to eat him alive.
The atmosphere was influenced by the fact that Pärmäkoski had announced the previous spring that he would not accept a place in the A national team for the training season. He would train on his own.
According to the book, the reason for the decision was largely the fact that Pärmäkoski was disappointed with his coach, who was pushed aside after only one season Matti Haaviston To receive treatment from the ski association.
Now Haavisto had reserved the same accommodation for his athlete as for the members of the A national team, ignoring the explosive nature of the setting.
The other elite women had experienced the number one star’s departure from the A national team as a vote of no confidence. When the coaching management suggested before the start of the World Cup that Pärmäkoski participate in the last intensity training at Olostunturi in Muonio, the rest of the women’s team definitely said that it would not be possible.
Eternity subject
A lot has been written and talked about in Finland about the ongoing atmosphere problems of the women’s national ski team from one generation to the next, which of course is also due to the fact that the national team in question has been very followed and successful.
Before Pärmäkoski, these issues were discussed in written form Aino-Kaisa Saarinenwhose biography Tahto, which was published in 2016, brought the national team’s personal relations to a dead end that screamed for a crisis meeting, just before the World Cup home competition season. Pärmäkoski also returns to these moods in his biography.
In his open biography, Pärmäkoski also reveals that he has practically spent his entire working career in a team with a rather strange and exceptional atmosphere.
The challenges of the job description are highlighted in the work, for example, by someone who has been the head coach on two occasions and for a long time was in charge of female skiers in particular Reijo Jylhä:
The most important task of a women’s coach is to understand when entering the room that even though things are being reviewed, the matter is not clear, but a process always starts, which is in progress for an indefinite period of time or may never end.
Jylhä states that problems could also arise from the fact that Saarinen, who was coached by him himself, like Pärmäkoski (formerly Lähteenmäki), who was almost 12 years younger, was tough to say about things.
Closed ticket voting
Kerttu Niskanen and Pärmäkoski, high school friends, who were once close, the latter reveals in his biography to be very distant nowadays. The matter has also been influenced by the star’s competitive nature.
In particular, crisis situations have been created by skier choices both for personal trips and especially for relays, where the medal seam itself for each screen passer has often been excellent.
In the book, Jylhä admits that one of the big mistakes of his last term as head coach was the closed ticket voting, which was used to select the female quartet that won bronze for the 4×5 kilometer relay of the World Championships in Falun in 2015.
When the music stopped, there was no chair left Anne Kyllönen. It was quite a challenge for him to receive such a vote of no confidence from the rest of the team, which of course had its own nuances in everyday life.
According to the book, fits of rage were also seen in the service booth in connection with the Beijing Olympic relay 2022. Pärmäkoski does not elaborate on the situation, because he was not directly involved. The reason was a “misunderstanding”.
Saarinen ukaas
The main character of the book got to know these aspects for the first time at the 2011 World Championships in Oslo, where at only 20 years old he achieved silver in the pair relay and bronze in the relay.
According to Pärmäkoski, Saarinen, the team’s number one star at the time, made no secret of the fact that he would have preferred to have skied his long-time national teammate in the pair relay Pirjo Muranen with:
– Remember that I have never skied worse than second place in a pair relay, Saarinen told his inexperienced pair, who wanted tips for the competition, according to the book.
After the competition, Saarinen informed the 20-year-old Lähteenmäki that he would leave for the return run after passing the doping test and that he would leave the media obligations to the junior. The shock of Lähteenmäki, who spoke poor English and was media shy, was complete.
Since then, he says in the book that he noticed that Saarinen’s well-known outbursts did not stem from malice or malice.
Of course, Krista Pärmäkoski also states that she found friends from national team circles in the book. As such, he promotes those who have already finished their careers Riitta-Liisa Roponen and Riikka Sarasoja-Liljan and 2019 to the deceased Mona-Liisa Nousiainen.