Urheilu followed the Sports Gala moment by moment in this article.
The selection of the athlete of the year is one of those moments that are repeated every year, and someone is sure to get angry. Then there’s the section that emphasizes that rewarding athletes and achievements in different sports is pointless in general.
All in all, the gala evening and the awards have become a significant part of the Finnish sports calendar, and the Sports Gala deserves the visibility it gets. Mere gloom and the rattling of sabers – and that’s what the past year offered enough – will not maintain or increase the appreciation of Finnish sports.
Now it seems that this time there will be no uproar over the selection of Sportsman of the Year. The choices did not come as a surprise at all, though Alexander Barkov made history by being honored as the first ice hockey player.
But it seems crazy that a hockey player was chosen as Sportsman of the Year only now for the first time. Considering the importance and interest of the sport to Finns.
And this partly shows that the sports world has changed.
Before the Sports Gala, various preliminaries reminded that the 1990 election is the worst farce in voting history. Then the EC javelin gold medalist Päivi Alafrantti hit his fifth Stanley Cup winner Jari Kurrin.
In addition, only the 2011 World Cup champion team of the Lions (the team could be selected as Athlete of the Year until 2019) and Miro Heiskanen in the year of the corona pandemic.
Although the importance of ice hockey is huge in Finland, the following combination has previously been highlighted in the vote of the Sports Journalists’ Association: Suomi shirt and prestigious competition medal.
For example, in the 2000s, that front has only been broken Teemu Pukki and Lukas Hradeckybut they also highlighted the Huuhkajie’s historic EC competition drug, as well as Lauri Markkanenwho received the award with his incredible NBA breakthrough, but was also the third best scorer in the World Cup in a Suomi shirt.
I am not that familiar with Päivi Alafrantti, because I was born in that year. In my own circle of acquaintances, a more familiar object of joking has been Tero Pitkämäki The choice for athlete of the year, when this 2015 had won the World Championship bronze in the javelin.
Of course, nothing away from Pitkämäki, but the man himself has stated that “that choice definitely left a bit of a bad taste” and that the choice “felt like an obligation”.
And of course nothing off From Marko Anttilabut I was also amused when he was chosen as the Hockey Player of the Year 2019. “Mörkö” overtook the NHL stars with his World Cup gold heroism.
Aleksander Barkov made a huge mark in the NHL and lifted the Stanley Cup as the first Finnish captain in history.
Instead, Barkov was last seen in the national team jersey in 2016.
The situation is underlined by the fact that when the sports journalists voted Barkov Sportsman of the Year, the public voted Barkov’s lifting of the Stanley Cup as the most exciting sports moment of the year.
This again reminds us of the kind of status, not only hockey but specifically the NHL, has achieved in Finland. You can see that, for example, from the number of articles and readers published by different media.
It’s not that many would have watched the decisive NHL final won by Florida live, but in Finland time the match came in the middle of the night.
However, it doesn’t matter, because the same trophy lifting clips are still rarely found on TikTok and Instagram the day a person interested in sports opens their app.
Lauri Markkanen’s selection as Sportsman of the Year as the first basketball player said something. Markkanenka’s excerpts are not exactly offered in prime time in Finland.
The change emphasizes that now, for the second year in a row, pisti went to North America.
Just before Keke Rosberg’s shocked selection in 1982 as well as futista stars Jari Litmanen and Sami Hyypien the selections have broken the front and grabbed their best achievements in other than Finland costume.
Today’s media use is known to be more fragmented than ever – on the other hand, those uplifting intergenerational experiences weren’t available on TV2 during the last Olympics.
For what anyway by Oliver Helander javelin bronze would have been enough if it had come from the Olympics?
Many have seen evidence of the change in the world in that too, that now in the selection of Athlete of the Year, the top two were two with a foreign background.
Or in the fact that, in the last six years, the choice has fallen four times to a team sport player. Before Teemu Pukin before the 2019 event, the team athlete of the year was Sami Hyypia and the year was 2001.
Now, however, one confusing glass ceiling for Finns has been broken. The world is changing, and inevitably it is sometimes reflected in the Association of Sports Journalists.
The author of this article did not take part in the Athlete of the Year voting.