Finland has fallen far from the world’s leading sports countries. The expert questions the choices made in top domestic sports, which have led to an overly complex and fragmented system.
According to a recent report from the Ministry of Education and Culture, there are several problem areas in top Finnish sports. According to the report, elite sports are unable to meet the societal expectations placed on it.
According to the final report, “Finnish top sports have a great past, an uncertain present and a challenging future”.
At the end of 2021, the Ministry of Education and Culture established a group of experts to assess the state and future of top sports in Finland.
A final report entitled “Finland’s top sports need confidence” by Professor Karl-Erik Michelsenspecialist researcher Kati Lehtonenexhibition manager Kalle Rantala and assistant professor Markku Jokisipilä.
In recent years, efforts have been made to reform Finnish sports life since the report submitted by the Top Sports Change Working Group, Humus 2012. At that time, it was also decided to establish an Olympic Sports Excellence Unit to manage and coordinate Finnish excellence.
According to Kati Lehtonen, a specialist researcher at Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences, the idea of centralization has been justified in principle.
– Then it will come but. The trend is not good in Finland, when we look at many success indicators, which are medals and points internationally so far, Lehtonen said at the report launch in Helsinki on Tuesday.
One hundred years of centralization project
According to Lehtonen, it is worth asking whether the choices made in top domestic sports in the early 2010s were “structurally correct and whether they produced added value, ie international success”.
One of the turning points of recent years was seen in 2017, when the reformed Olympic Committee began operations as a result of the closures and mergers of several organizations.
– The model of one umbrella organization and the so-called centralization have been a project in Finnish sports for a hundred years. What was achieved in 2017 was a kind of endpoint, but somehow here has been the logic of forced change processes.
– We have still not really got to our feet from the big change of the 1990s at the system level. In a way, we have remained in the spiral of continuous repairs, Lehtonen says.
“Complex, fragmented and bureaucratic”
The authors of the report give a barren picture of the development of Finland’s top sports success, because “although individual success stories are still emerging, Finland has fallen far away from the world’s leading sports countries”.
Also Danish researchers Rasmus K. Storm and Klaus Nielsen find problems in the top Finnish sports system. They will prepare one final report on the background reports.
– Although improvements have been made in recent years, the system remains complex, fragmented and bureaucratic. Guidance and division of labor or responsibilities are unclear, and communication between different stakeholders is limited, the background report states.