Five young women do gymnastics on a regular weekday morning. They are not gymnasts, but pole vaulters. The weekly two-and-a-half-hour gymnastics is an important exercise, when the goal of the athletes is to throw themselves on the wall more than four meters, one of the women closer to the phantom limit of five meters.
The coach shuttles from point to point, shouts instructions to one while helping the other to find the right trajectory.
If you didn’t know which of them is the European pole vault champion and World Cup bronze medalist, you couldn’t tell from the coach’s behavior. Wilma Murto25, gets no special attention in the windowless gymnastics cave.
They move to the sleigh. That’s where my shrill voice comes from, to which the coach Jarno Koivunen49, and his trainees pay no attention to anything.
Wilma Murto is leaning on the gymnastic rack, and typing on her phone. He is clearly the group’s music manager, because the beat playing in the speakers changes to rap. If someone describes their taste in music as being “wide-ranging†, that’s probably what it means.
– Workplace bullying, Koivunen comments on the music choices of his trainees and makes Murro burst out laughing.
The positive atmosphere of the exercises can be seen and heard.
It hasn’t always been so comfortable for the two of them to work together.
Six years ago, Jarno Koivunen had to make a painful decision, which has had far-reaching consequences.
A mother taking notes
One of the parents following the children’s fencing school catches the attention of Jarno Koivunen. The mother has brought her 9-year-old daughter to the athletics hall in Kupitta, less than an hour’s drive from Salo Kuusjoki. It’s 2007.
Jarno Koivunen has taught pole vaulting to hundreds of children and young people. From the first seasons, it is not yet known which Seiväņő school student will become a top athlete. Not even Wilma Murto stood out, but her mother did Sari Murto stood out. He asked Koivuse about pole vaulting and enthusiastically wrote down the instructions.
Later, Koivunen noticed that the long-haired girl was not only talented but also exceptionally good at concentration. The coordination was a little lost, but it could be improved. In 2014, when Murro was in high school, Koivuse became his personal coach.
When 17-year-old Murto bent the youth world record 471 in 2016, Koivunen had already known for several years that he had a unique talent in his hands. Now others knew that too.
The coach had been able to prepare for everything, including the public spotlight that lay ahead. It was important to him that Murto could focus on sports.
– About a year before that world record, it started to appear that Wilma might go quite high. Thank God I told Wilma’s parents that it would be good to hire a manager. Heiskan Teron joining Wilma’s background was the salvation of her career.
Top sports showed a dark side to Murro after a world-record year: injuries followed and the development curve took a downward turn. At the same time, Murto went from a high school student to a professional athlete.
Everything at the Paavo Nurme stadium looks quite ordinary on a summer day in July. 20-year-old Wilma Murto and Jarno Koivunen chat in the sunshine. There are usually other Koivunen’s coaches there, but now the coach wants to be alone with Murro.
Koivunen has decided to end the coaching relationship with Murro. He has thought about it for a long time and came to the conclusion that it would be the best solution for Murro’s sports career.
– It was a hard place to tell Wilma that I would no longer coach her. The goals and activities did not meet at that point, and I did not find ways to change the matter, Koivunen recalls.
The burglary took place in 2020 For Iltalehti reasons why the joint work ended in the summer of 2018.
– I started to have my own opinions, which maybe I didn’t know how to express correctly, and the coach didn’t know how to accept them, Murto said at the time.
The conversation in the sunny stadium was short, but later Murto and Koivunen discussed the matter at length. At the end of the competition season, the duo parted ways. However, there was no question of an intermediate crime.
– We had a really good time the whole time. I was even ready to help Wilma find a new coach. Coaching responsibility includes that the athlete cannot be left alone. Things have to be handled smartly, Koivunen says.
In autumn 2018, Murto found a new home in Lahti, where he was coached Steve Rippon. The cooperation fell into differences of opinion, and in March 2019 Murto moved to Kuortane Mikko Latvala for coaching. In the fall of 2019, Murto made it to the World Championships in Doha, but failed to qualify with a score of 435.
At the same time, Jarno Koivunen continued to work hard at the Turku Sports Academy. His long-term mentee, a former SE woman Minna Nikkanen ended his career.
For a long time, Jarno Koivuse was not responsible for an international level pole vaulter.
There was less travel, more self-development.
†The blowout came in handy for me as well. I had toured foreign competitions with Minna and Wilma for more than ten years. It’s not always easyâ€
A surprising call
In the fall of 2019, Koivunen woke up on his sofa at home to the sound of his phone ringing. The caller was Wilma Murto, who had gone to try out the wing in other coaches’ lessons a good year before.
Koivunen first thought that Murto needed help with the bulkheads or their transport. Murto wanted to start the coaching relationship from a clean slate.
The cooperation with Mikko Latvala had lasted half a year at this point, but Murto had not settled in Kuortane and the views with the coach did not meet well enough.
– Of course I was surprised when he called. First I put the brakes on so that you can think carefully now. I didn’t immediately promise, but I was willing to listen more, Koivunen recounts the course of the call.
The next day, Koivunen and Murto met Kupitta at the bowling alley and unanimously decided that the athlete would return to Koivunen’s coaching.
– He was a good guy when he left and a good guy when he came back. It hadn’t changed, says Koivunen.
The continuation of the coaching relationship with Koivunen meant a certain kind of software update for joint work.
– We updated our dynamics so that it feels equal. Jarno has been my junior coach, which is very different from coaching a top adult athlete, Murto says and continues:
– The thing that has changed the most is how I know how to communicate so that the coaching relationship works better.
When Murro’s coaching carousel stopped at the end of 2019, everyday life slipped back to its new old tracks. In the summer of 2021, he finally broke his five and a half year old Finnish record. The burden fell off the shoulders of Koivunen and Murro.
A couple of years earlier, Murro’s rapid pace of changing coaches was surprising. Some of the critics considered him a lost teenage star. Not anymore. Murto was on his way to the sharpest peak in pole vaulting.
Now Murto is the reigning European champion, both indoor and outdoor. Last summer, he won bronze at the World Championships in Budapest.
When Koivunen and Murto now look back on the years 2018 and 2019, they are satisfied with what has resulted from the difficult decision.
Koivunen is demanding and modest at the same time. Demanding towards himself and his athletes, but modest when asked to praise himself.
– What makes me good is that when I take responsibility for someone’s coaching, I take it one hundred percent. I don’t let myself off the hook easily. But I don’t know if I’m a better coach than I was three years ago. Success always comes with being a better coach.
Following Murro’s success, interest in Koivu has also grown.
– Now that it has gone well, for some reason everyone would like to listen to what I want to say. The first thing I have promised myself is that I will not go to any lectures or speak to companies. It would take time away from my main job, says Koivunen.
The coach also thanks his protégé that this has kept the focus on the essential.
– Wilma has been there for a long time now that it should be very strong, that not a single training should be missed because of these sponsor things , and there’s not really any left. It’s been going well.
In individual sports, generating income is often more complicated than, for example, as a paid soccer player. The team Murto, Koivunen and Heiska has thought about the strict limits for cooperation patterns.
– Of course, there must be income and sponsors, but there must be exact limits so that the opportunities for sports do not get worse. In the end, sport brings bread to the table. You won’t get good partners if you jump 420. If you jump 490, you can afford to choose. You can make sponsorship contracts the way you want. In a way, it gives peace of mind, says Koivunen.
Koivunen’s career could have gone in a completely different direction if his decision-making was guided by money. Seven years ago, Koivus was lured to coach in Qatar with a hefty monthly salary and employment benefits. He didn’t even consider taking the offer.
– It is perhaps these values of life. I wouldn’t coach at all if money was the first metric by which I make decisions. Money is not that important to me. As long as you can manage normal living, that’s enough. I’ve said that if there was more money, there would be more waste. It wouldn’t do any good.
– Life is better the more normal it is.
Last year, the Olympic Committee’s top sports officer Tommi Pärmäkoski noticed that Koivunen’s working hours increased from week to month. Now, thanks to the Olympic Committee’s support, Koivunen has been able to reduce his other work and focus on coaching Murro towards the Paris Olympics.
The year 2024 offers Murro an opportunity for up to three prestigious competition medals, when the calendar includes the World Championships in Glasgow, the European Championships in Rome and the Olympics in Paris.
– Sometimes I had a dream to get an athlete to the Olympics. When it happened, I thought it would be great to have an athlete in the Olympic final. When that happened, it would be great to have an athlete on the podium at the Olympics. That’s next, Koivunen thinks.
When the bar gets closer to five meters, the pressure on Koivunen’s coaching skills also increases.
– I don’t trust that kind of black feels method. Raw data is raw data even after a few years. It’s easier to lean on. I have a bank of probably 40 years of data, which has been a tool for my own learning. When you edit those excels, things stand out, which work and which don’t.
Koivunen spends twenty hours a week with Murro and tries to be present at every practice.
Koivunen spends most of his waking hours thinking about pole vaulting and its related training. In addition to the exercises, time is spent on planning and analyzing them.
†In terms of quality, it is important that you just can’t go to training when you are tired or make a plan when you are tired. But the coach has to have the best moment.â€
Quality is an important theme in Koivunen’s coaching philosophy anyway. According to Koivunen, pole vaulting is a fairly repeatable sport, and nothing surprising often happens in it. Discussions with other top coaches have shown that coaching methods are quite consistent around the world.
– The decisive factor will be who does the simple good exercises with a little better quality than the other guy. The entire training must be based on the fact that quality cannot be compromised, neither in the exercises themselves, nor in the training, nor in the work done for recovery.
– We have a saying that someone will do it anyway. If you don’t do it as well as you can, someone else will. Then you have lost the game.