TALLINN
The most exciting news of the Finnish athletics autumn was the 7-man athlete Saga to Vanninen21. Last spring winter in Glasgow, she became the first Finnish female medalist at the World Indoor Athletics Championships, which greatly raised expectations for the prestigious events of the summer, namely the European Championships in Rome and the Olympic Games in Paris.
When the summer became a big failure due to a difficult health situation – suspension in Rome and 15th place in Paris – it was not a big surprise when Vanninen and Jesse Jokinen the remote coaching relationship was reported to have ended at the athlete’s initiative in the fall.
A couple of weeks after this, the Finnish athletics family shuddered when quite a legend was announced as the Tampere’s new coach: the Estonian 10-match Olympic champion Erki Nool54.
At the same time, the news meant that Vanninen would settle in Tallinn, where he now trains with Nooli, who speaks excellent Finnish, for periods of about two weeks and 20 training sessions. They will be followed by a similar segment with a direct flight connection in Tampere, Nooli’s program there as well.
Estonia is a real multi-match country: no less than nine Estonians have scored more than 8,300 points in 10 games, but on the other hand, the national record for 7 games is 124 points weaker than A Swedish fairy tale SE result 6,404 from 1991.
“I’m not mentally ready”
Last week, Urheilu followed the two training days of Vanninen and Nooli in Tallinn, and the athlete wanted to clarify the background of his change of coach a little.
– The reason was not that the summer value competitions failed because of back problems. Already in the winter, the World Championship silver came for the same reason, after quite a few training compromises. I had been thinking about a foreign coach for a long time, but maybe I wasn’t mentally ready before. I believed that the most suitable coach for me in this situation had to apply from abroad.
Many surprising figures were waiting for the Olympic Committee’s top sports individual Tommi Pärmäkoski and manager emeritus, Finland’s most internationally networked figure in athletics Jukka Härkönen. The latter is not a member of Vanninen’s team, but upon request, he contacted the Estonian, whom he has known for a long time, to ask about his interest in the coaching position.
Pärmäkoski says that in addition to Erki Nooli, he has been in contact with a top Dutch player Anouk Vetterin to his coach father to Ronald Vetter and Norwegian Eirik Roeenwhose athlete Sander Skotheim would have won the Olympic gold in Paris if he had gotten a result in the pole vault.
In the end, Nool became the most relevant option.
– I follow a lot of Finnish sports, and Saga was of course familiar. I also watched his matches closely in Paris, where I was an expert on Estonian TV. The idea interested me, but first I had to get to know each other. An athlete is not just numbers and statistics, but a person. It interested me much more than the old training programs.
Fantastic training conditions
Whereas the young man from Tampere was familiar to the middle-aged fighting legend, the opposite could not be said for the same.
– When I couldn’t find it on Tiktok, I googled it, Vanninen laughs.
– When the collaboration started, it quickly dawned on me that Erki is a big star here.
During the familiarization visit, Vanninen was very convinced of Tallinn’s excellent training conditions. There are three high-class athletics halls in the city area, of which Vanninen trains in two: in the city center and in the suburb of Lasnamäki.
In Tampere, athletics has to give way to its high-quality, best hall facilities constantly, because they are given to other activities for months at worst during the indoor training season.
“No cat shows in halls”
– No cat shows are organized in our halls, Nool states.
Times have changed a lot, because at the turn of the 1990s, young Nool spent two winters in Tampere, when in the capital of newly independent Estonia, no suitable indoor training space could be found in the first place. Lukkarinrakkaus towards Vanninen’s club, i.e. Tampere’s Pyrintö, at least did not reduce the interest in helping Finnish talent.
Nooli’s main job is running an athletics school, in which around 400 children from Tallinn participate this season. He receives compensation for Vanninen’s coaching, which he describes as “believable”.
– Credible compensation is important for both parties, because it also means credible operations.
Vanninen pays a significant part of the expenses from his own partnership income. The Tampere Purintö, the Sports Association and the Olympic Committee are also involved. Vanninen ensured his social well-being by asking his best friend and track and field partner to accompany him to Tallinn. Neat Flight is known from the long jump and triple jump place. The women live in a modern apartment in the city center within walking distance of the training hall.
A Japanese learns Finnish
In addition to the Finnish duo, the training group includes a Japanese 10-player with more than 8,000 points Yuma Maruyama. He has become a good friend of the Finnish duo, to whom the women teach a few words of Finnish every day. There is a good spirit from the training group, and according to Vanninen, the psychological eye of the coach, who is still in steel condition, plays well.
– It has always been important to me that even the hardest workouts are also fun. Erki has a really good handle on that. We’ve learned that when he talks about an easy workout, it’s worth subconsciously preparing for something completely different.
Maruyama and Vanninen’s main goal for the 2025 outdoor track season is the same: World Cup in Tokyo in September. Vanninen will pull through the five-a-side match in Tallinn on the first weekend of February and Holland in the European Championships in Apeldoorn at the beginning of March. If everything has gone well, to the program are also included The World Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China, two weeks after the European Championships.
When moving out from under the roof, the plans are to wear the 7-match overalls twice before the WC Tokyo – Götzis in a classic event at the turn of May and June and under the age of 23 At the European Championships in Bergen after mid-July. If the second largest city in Norway were to win a full pot, Vanninen would already be fifth in the prestigious youth competition.
When the coach and the athlete already in January paint the landscape of the competition season with such bold colors, it means that the training season has gone well so far.
The back has lasted now
Magnetic resonance images taken of Vanninen’s back after the Paris Olympics revealed stress changes. Wilma Murron having worked with for a long time Jukka Kankaan the physical therapy worked, and Vanninen has not had to make compromises during the training season. Even the impact sports that put the most strain on the lower back, i.e. long and high jump and hurdles, have already been done in Tallinn with high powers.
– Athlete’s health is number one for me. I don’t know anything more stupid than breaking up an athlete in the weight room – for which you don’t even get a single point, says Erki Nool.
Vanninen is known as an athlete who can release quite a bit of power when needed, as of course it must in a multi-sport event. The coach, who has seen everything from behind this scene, mapped the weaknesses, which have now been calmly fixed.
– Saga’s musculature has been so unbalanced that certain muscles have dominated and others have been too weak. In addition, we have clearly run more and more diversely than before. Saga’s so-called match fitness develops that way. Nothing happens in a day, but Saga has been very motivated to change, an excellent coachable, says Nool, who already in 2003 coached the Italian Giuseppe Gibilisco pole vault world champion.
– It’s really interesting to see how the season starts when the sport techniques have also been changed. When there has been so much new, it has been especially absent from punt training. Otherwise, the muscle condition has been trained a lot, explains Vanninen, whose playbook with Nooli starts with cooperation until the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
In the same city, in 1984, women’s 7-a-side was added to the Olympic list.
Among the significant changes in punt training is that, for example, in the important parallel pull-up, Vanninen now lifts the bar up from the floor, no longer from the top of the boxes at knee level.
A great example of a high jump
The coach reminds that the development targets and the time spent on them, which is always limited, should also be thought about based on the 7-game points table.
– When a 7-player jumps a height of 195, a man has to jump 238 to get the same points.
In the past 12 years, the World Cup or Olympic gold in men’s high jump would have remained a dream once with a result of 238.
Nool, who studied exercise science and pole vaulted before his match career, says that he learned a lot from many coaching legends, such as Sergei Bubkan from an apprentice father From Vitali Petrov.
Vanninen admits that one of Erki Nooli’s coaching traits was enough to melt at first. The Olympic champion does not set long-term programs in stone, but the athletes may only hear about the next day’s activities and training locations the night before.
Nool says the reason is that he closely monitors the athletes’ nervous load, which may require a very quick reaction, i.e. lightening, intensifying or even canceling the training.
– It was new, but I got used to it, says Vanninen, who spends time with Nea Lenno between training sessions and in the evenings, mostly at the apartment resting, cooking and working on streaming services.
The women pick up groceries at the store or order them at the door from Wolt Market. When Urheilu offers lunch to the athletes in the Old Town full of Finnish tourists, Vanninen, who settled in Tallinn in October, tells a rather surprising piece of information:
– I am here for the second time in the whole time.
Nool adores Finnish sports
In the past 10 years, Finland has achieved two prestigious medals in global outdoor athletics. Historically, Paris did not produce an Olympic medal at all, which started quite a few, still unfinished, box games in Finnish top sports. Erki Nool admits that he follows the events north of the Gulf of Finland with confusion.
– In Finland, apparently, it is imagined that things will change when the place of the bench in the office is changed from north to southwest. Finland has not been able to update the fact that the global map of elite sports has changed. The javelin results in Paris were a good example of that, Nool describes the amazing Olympic final, where Europe for the first time ever missed out on a medal.
He admits that he is also speaking in his own case when he proposes a change to the support policy of Finnish elite sports, where money is shot here and there with a shotgun. Of course, some goes to top projects, but some also goes to very mediocre tunings from an international perspective.
At the moment, perhaps 10 Finnish athletes can, with some kind of realism, dream of Olympic victory in 2028, one of them being Saga Vanninen.
– From this moment, 100,000 euros a year for these ten people until Los Angeles would be less than four million in total. Karel Tilgan (Estonian elite athlete) Chinese girlfriend (Zheng Ninali) was 10th at the Tokyo Olympics. The Chinese government invests $500,000 a year in him. It has perspective.
– The bet differences between the top and the middle level must be really big, because top sport is not socialism, says Nool, who had time to gather experience of the social system in question as a citizen of the Soviet Union for the first 21 years of his life.