Muonio
Starting his competition season at the Olostunturi Games in Muonio on Saturday Ivo Neck fired a hard free technique intensity exercise on the five-kilometer track of the fell on Thursday. At the end of it, the lactate content of the blood sample taken from the fingertip was so moderate that the head coach Teemu Fuck it actually smiled.
His team’s first-place finishers are drooling two weeks before the start of the World Cup in Kuusamo.
Niskanen and his arsenal of more than a hundred pairs of skis in Olos during a power training vacation What Russian caring with Niko Pretty solved the riddle.
A rare DNF
Last March 17th, Niskanen’s statistics appeared in the 20 km (v) mass start in Falun with a very rare suspension mark for him, i.e. DNF, did not finish. Now Niskanen and Nättinen wanted to find out if the reason was really in the skis, as the athlete in Sweden estimated.
The skier and guardian tested Falun’s race pair against other pairs, so to speak, and the conclusion was clear.
– In a way, certainty was sought for what was already little known. That couple isn’t going anywhere, but I still don’t quite know why it isn’t. Would the bottom have been a little burnt during the lubrication?, the good-natured Niskanen thought in an interview with Urheilu after his practice.
Quiet life behind
It was a very exclusive situation, because Niskanen has hardly appeared in public since last spring’s season ended with a painful back muscle tear at the Äänekoski WC.
The reasons for prioritizing things were logical: the Niskases had a second child, a girl, in September, and the family’s detached house project culminates in moving in after the ski season.
– I don’t consider myself to have been hiding, I’ve been completely available here. But there were no journalists at the Aateli Race, I guess the Paris Olympic Games are of more interest to the media, the three-time Olympic champion laughs.
Niskanen practically focused his training entirely on his hometown Kuopio, from where he occasionally went to Vuokatti to train his coach Olli Ohtonen with clips of a few days. In the summer, the duo spent more than two weeks at a high-altitude camp in Livigno, Italy, at an altitude of 2,300 meters above sea level.
Excellent training conditions
– The fact is that nowhere else in the world are there such excellent opportunities for roller skiing as in Kuopio and Vuokatti, says Niskanen, who also toils on the wide treadmill in his garage for roller skiing training on the rospuuttokels.
Something that has become fashionable again in Finland, for example Niskanen’s good steeplechase friend Raitanen’s top A large number of skiers do not agree to use the alpine hut they use, even if one could be found in Vuokatti.
– It feels too artificial. I don’t think I would sleep optimally with the device talking in the room. If I want to train at high altitude, I travel to authentic conditions. But it’s also true that because of the scenery, I no longer collect camping days. The landscapes have been seen.
Last spring, he somewhat unexpectedly rejoined the A national team’s lineup after being away in the summer of 2023, but even now he didn’t put too much of a burden on the team’s meager operating budget.
“We’ll see when the bill comes”
– When I was involved, I was naturally able to join the joint training if I was in Vuokatti at the same time as the guys from the A national team.
Regarding the known financial situation of the ski association, he says that he mainly relies on media information, also regarding the deductibles for the athletes during the upcoming World Cup weekends.
– It certainly sounds a bit like Kummel. We’ll see when the bill comes. In my opinion, the Ski Association has reacted to things, and I believe in a better future, says the superstar who indirectly generated millions of euros for the organization during his glorious career.
Niskanen’s status is told by the fact that the mega company Adidas recruited him as a textile mannequin during the season, with a huge contract signed by the company’s German headquarters.
Two episodes
Niskanen’s last season is best remembered for two episodes. In Kuusamo, the poles got a ride, when Norway’s second game Martin Löwström from Nyenget against turned into a loss. In the spring and winter, Niskanen and the national level skier were brought together Kalle Parantainen from rustling in Kuopio’s Suomen cup. The news coverage of the latter incident angered Niskas so much that he took Iltalehti’s material to the Public Speech Council, which oversees press ethics. It will hear the case on December 11.
Niskanen doesn’t cry over spilled milk.
– The media made some rounds. After throwing the sticks, I even laughed, but unfortunately it didn’t show in the pictures. For some reason, Niskanen says with a broad smile.
Since the 2023 training season was a great success for the four-time Athlete of the Year, who trained on his own, expectations were set accordingly.
A week in a raging fever
In the athlete’s opinion, the 2nd place in the Kuusamo 10 km was the best performance of the season, because soon in December it started to happen, so to speak. After the World Cup in Trondheim, after the middle of December, a high fever put Niskanen in bed for a week. It’s been more than a month since the competition break.
– When you’re in bed for a week with a forty-something fever and then you go to try it, I can assure you that you won’t.
Niskanen spent the five weeks between the Oberhof competition on January 21 and the Lahti World Cup on a competition break. The end of the season left my back, which is now fine.
I wish you health
– It is my sincere wish that this season, after a long time, I would be able to ski in good shape and compete. It’s quite frustrating when it hasn’t been possible for reasons almost beyond his control, says the four-time prize winner, whose 2022–23 was badly torpedoed by the corona infection in the early season.
Niskanen’s health problems in recent seasons are well described by these numbers: in the 2019-20 season, he skied no less than 31 times in the World Cup competitions and would have skied 36 times if the corona pandemic that had just started had not canceled the last five Cup competitions in North America.
After this, in the following four seasons, the number tag has been affixed a total of 46 times in World Cup competitions. There were no complaints about the results, for example, at the Olympic Games in Beijing 2022: gold, silver and bronze.
Not even a thought to stop
When interviewing a top sportsman who will turn 33 in less than two months, and who has made his family appreciably prosperous, the question about the duration of his career is appropriate.
It is clear that, barring miracles, Vieremä’s big boy will compete in the fourth Olympic Games of his career in 2026, but:
– Five golds are always better than four golds.
The answer suggests that Niskanen has already mentally decided to continue until the Winter Olympics granted to the French Alps, i.e. until 2030.
A successful extension of his career to the World Championships in Lahti 2029 would be a huge lottery jackpot.
– My body will decide that for me, but I haven’t even thought about quitting. There are many thoughts about life after career.
I left Cuba aside
If Niskanen, who dreams big, really goes home as an Olympic winner in both Val di Fiemme 2026 and France 2030, he would match the absolutely wild Olympic record seen in Paris last summer. Cuban Mijain Lopez took the Greco-Roman heavyweight Olympic gold for the fifth time in a row.
Already a streak of three Olympic victories raised Niskanen to share the Finnish record with his sports colleague Veikko Hakulinen and runner Paavo Nurmen alongside.
Two prestigious competitions in your home country during your own career would not be a very common achievement either. Athletes of Niskanen’s contemporaries already entered this category in 2017 in Lahti Janne Ahonen, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, Hannu Manny and Sami Jauhojärvi.
Not for the flat push circus
Niskanen says one thing for sure: the Ski Classics tour of extra long distances will not get him a big endorsement.
– It did not turn out to be the kind of product that was predicted 10 years ago. It has taken a bit of a backseat from me, says Niskanen, who with targeted special training and his other top qualities would think that he would be at least moderately successful in the push-pull circus.
Whereas Beijing’s demanding Olympic tracks with dry and slow snow in a high low-oxygen atmosphere served, for example, Iivo and Kerttu from Niska brilliantly, Trondheim’s banas don’t get Iivo Niskanen’s mouth for wheat in principle.
– Easy tracks have been built there, and if the weather is really fast, you can almost ask if they are very competitive tracks. But since we are quite far into spring and on the Atlantic coast, we have to hope for really heavy, wet weather with sleet. That would change the situation.
Predicts the jackpot for Johaug
In fast, i.e. gathering weather, the heroism would be shared at least for Trondheim’s own son in the joint start races, i.e Johannes Hösflot for Kläbo. On the women’s side, Niskanen’s faith in a certain comeback athlete is strong:
– If reports are to be believed, yes Therese Johaug take the jackpot from the games.
In his own calendar, Niskanen has scratched with a lightsaber the entry between 4th and 6th. March. Then the 10 kilometer (p) split start will be competed first. The next day, Niskanen will probably try to win the pair sprint with the same skiing Lauri Vuorinen with and following that, Finland’s second consecutive big relay World Cup medals, when they are awarded for the first time in a 4×7.5 kilometer competition for both sexes.
– On the men’s side, the situation is interesting to the extent that there will certainly be more sprinters in the selection situation than before, when the section was 10 kilometers.
After all, Niskas would become the first Finnish athlete to win a World Championship medal on three consecutive days.
– That’s the goal. The order of the competitions is just right and the program does not exclude those who want and can ski the whole set.