Athletics World Championships 19.8.–27.8. Ylen channels. See the schedule and broadcast information of the games at this link.
– If it goes like this, it’s a sure WC medal.
Oliver Helander, 26, has quickly entered the ranks of archery at the training course of the Vaasa club Diana 57. The arrows meet the small center of the goal board in the event, ten. Until one slips really far from it.
– This will help us qualify for the games, Helander, who actively practices another precision sport, i.e. frisbee golf, laughs.
At the time of the interview, there is a week and a half until the opening of the World Championships, and the culmination of the training and competition season, which started at the end of autumn, is at hand.
A coach on the parallel track Tero Pitkämäki shoots arrows at the board like spears at the field: in a flat area, but further from the center than Helander.
The wind and Tapio Ketelä guided sorting culminates in a mutual five-arrow middle. Helander wins it 38–35, even though it rains when the last arrow slips to the edges of the board.
Symbolic results
Although it was indeed a debut for both of them in the age-old form of sports and food procurement, the results symbolized Helander’s throwing and Pitkämäki’s coaching challenges in a special way.
The Vaasalized Karjalian is at best an absolute world-class creator, but at worst already within the same competition as the national talent, basic transmissions on axis 70–90 meters. The Jekyll and Hyde of the pitch.
– The potential is in a completely different category than mine, but the consistency is correspondingly also, the coach who threw 91.53 at the best when he was only 22 years old sighs.
While Pitkämäki was at that time, 2005, a very accomplished javelin thrower, Helander is still 26 years old, a throwing foundation is being built. It’s an incredible situation when we’re talking about a guy who is only 17 centimeters short of 90 meters.
– The situation is very unusual, but also interesting. I like challenges, says Pitkämäki, who took over Helander’s coaching responsibility in autumn 2021.
At that time, Helander had just, for the third time in his career, failed to qualify at the ranking level, at the Tokyo Corona Olympics. It is a Finnish record in the men’s javelin throw.
Although Eugene’s 8th place at the World Championships last year did not fully meet expectations, Helander accepted it with great relief.
– It would have been too hard to miss the qualification for the fourth time. Now I feel much more confident about it.
Due to a side injury, he did not go to the last evaluation of last season, ie the European Championships in Munich.
Rough start
The 2023 season started disastrously in the Doha Diamond League on May 5: no result. After that, the upward lead culminated in the PNG of Turku to the best Latin of the season, 87.32.
The slump in July was broken at the Kaleva Games in Lahti, when Helander threw, against the wind, 85.32. There was still a reserve of a couple of steps left on the speed track for the decisive moments of the World Championships.
– I used to throw it completely forward, the timing of the release phase was very wrong.
In July, athletics circles were also surprised by Helander’s and Pitkämäki’s decision to compete in the new Mikkeli Games event instead of Monaco’s Diamond League, which gathered the world’s elite.
The reason for the decision was that Pitkämäki himself was building an event with a company from Kuopio. In addition, a training break was planned for that period, which the coach did not want to be disrupted by travel.
In order to reach the Diamond League’s September finals in Eugene, Helander now has to do excellently in the Zurich Diamond League after the World Championships.
Vaisu level in the world
Last year during the prestigious championships, Helander’s season’s best was about 2.5 meters better than now, but the current season has allowed him to throw the full six laps more often than before. The number of competitions before the value race trip is the same as in 2022, i.e. six, when the qualifying for the Kaleva Games is left out of the calculations.
One, but only one, dose of cortisone has been budgeted for a sensitive spot, i.e. the shoulder of the throwing arm. Elkapää, exceptionally, does not worry the duo during the first trip to Hungary in both of their lives.
The average of Helander’s competition results this summer has been 83.15, last summer 82.75. Even though the development has been so moderate, the man doesn’t skimp on his World Cup goals.
– Yes, I dare to say it out loud, that the goal is a medal.
The coach nods next to him:
– The only correct answer. The goal is quite realistic.
However, the realism of the goal is not only related to the improvement of Helander’s performance consistency and good health, but also to the current global outlook of the sport.
World champion in Eugene Anderson Peters jumped more than 90 meters three times in the final, Neeraj Chopra and Jakub Vadlejch were arguing for silver every few centimeters at the level of more than 88 meters. Over the course of the season, three men broke the 90-meter mark, from which Helander, fifth in statistics, was 17 centimeters behind. No fewer than 11 men threw more than 86 meters.
Even though it’s a situational sport, the big picture is clear. In the 2023 season, no one has thrown more than 90 meters and only four athletes have thrown more than 86 meters. Of these, 87.35 in the high air in Kenya beat the Belgian by Timothy Herman the right level moves at 79–80 meters. German stars Andreas Hofmann probably due to an anterior cruciate ligament injury at the last dock, and no Johannes Vetter gather a large group of those who believe in a solid return.
In Budapest, the World Cup medal may well start with an initial score of 85, as Anderson Peters, who suffered from an ankle injury, is not in his best form of last season. Helander doesn’t believe in such a low level of requirements at the brand new stadium built on the banks of the Danube.
Outside of Finland, he himself has achieved a result of over 85 meters once. It happened in the Stockholm Diamond League in June of last year.
Like a different person
– Weber (Julian, German European Champion 2022), Chopra, Vadlejch. That’s without a doubt the number one favourites, Helander lists.
Helander, who grew up in a Swedish-speaking milieu and played a strongly Finno-Swedish team sport, i.e. handball, even in the national team, is a completely different person in his public appearances than he was a few years ago.
The performance tension is on its way. Lips fly with the first domestic one, which was still a tar line at the end of the 2010s. Pitkämäki is to be thanked for a lot, of course, not only.
A good relationship and in general a very Finnish-speaking spear family have also done their good part.
– Oh my God, how exciting those interviews and others were when I was younger. Self-confidence is now on a completely different level, Helander laughs.
Pitkämäki gave 2021 During the Tokyo Olympics A tough interview for Ilta-Sanom, in which he believed that Helander’s career would drag on until the end without radical changes. At the same time, the worried legend made it clear that he is ready to be the talent’s new coach.
After returning from Tokyo, Helander obediently, but nervously picked up the phone. He does not rule out that without that phone call, the main content of life would no longer be elite sports.
– A level of less than 80 meters would hardly have motivated much.
When Pitkämäki unexpectedly decided to quit his job as sports coach of the Sports Confederation in the fall of 2022, he announced at the same time that he would continue to support Helander. Even after that, the challenge has been anything but easy.
– He has never regretted it. Part of what has made this so great is the fact that there hasn’t been a straight path to success, but there have been various adjustments. Frankly speaking, I don’t know if I would even have been interested in coaching an athlete like myself, whose career everything progressed so logically.
Men’s javelin qualifying is on the program of the World Championships on Friday at 11:10 (A group) and 12:45 (B group). The javelin final will be contested on Sunday from 21:20.