Entertainment star Antti Tuisku’s WC project left behind only winners, writes Urheiluin’s Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen sports reporter
12:25•Updated 12:46
Yes, Finland is known as a skiing country and Urheilu’s sport broadcasts are very popular, but on Monday morning banged hard a startling figure.
Finnpanel, which measures the number of TV viewers, announced that the broadcast of the 10-kilometer (p) split race of the Imatra WC had reached, i.e. captured, at least for a few minutes, as many as 990,000 Finns.
When you add to this the viewers of the commercial Viaplay race broadcast, the million mark hit the mark.
It does not require Nobel-level reasoning ability to write that those few minutes were mainly placed at the beginning of the broadcast, when the country’s leading entertainment star started the journey with number 1 Antti Tuisku.
After this, the average number of viewers of the broadcast settled at 635,000. That was also the top number of the week on TV2 and, as such, huge when talking about a national championship event where elite athletes With neck braces and Pärmäkoskine didn’t even show up.
A great departure
Tuisku’s race week got off to a great start already on Friday, when the women’s team of the AT Ski Team, which he founded and made its debut at the SM level, won the gold in the pair sprint Emmi Lämsän and only 16 years old Olivia Puranen with force.
Let’s first see what the middle-aged entertainment star got from the track: 142nd place among 151 finishers.
Leave the winner Cross mat Hakola accumulated 8:26.5, which means that Tuisku took an average of 5.06 seconds from the dark charmer of Pohjois Satakunta in each 100 meter dash. It’s almost a difference that can be measured by a calendar.
Despite this, Tuisku, who seriously and almost professionally prepared for the event, made almost every participant a winner at Imatra. This is symbolized above all by the media consumption figures already presented above.
Also, no one doubts any more whether the athlete who finished 50th in the intermediate start of the SC Games, for example – in this case, Tuisku beat Pohti Ski Team by almost 5.5 minutes Jirka Oja – but still a pretty tough athlete.
The Ukonniemi stadium was also visited by a segment of spectators that has not really been seen before at the cross-country skiing competitions. AT Ski Team’s fan merchandise sold at a pace that made the representatives of established ski clubs green with envy.
Tight-fisted on social media
On social media, Tuisku’s presence at a national value event sharply divided opinions.
It should be noted that the star did not receive any special treatment from the Ski Federation, but you can enter the SC by registering, as long as you have a license and paid participation fee.
For example, Tuisku’s road to the Kaleva Games in athletics would have been open because of the sport-specific result limit requirements maintained by the Sports Association.
The undeniable abundance of media attention Tuisku received was too much for the Puritans, but even the hard-hats would think that a million Finns are not at least very wrong. Sometimes it’s good to open the windows even in the winter evenings.
Sitting on the board of a traditional sports organization, Painiliitto, which is struggling for its media time and living space on a low bridge Pekka Moliis expressed it over the weekend without saying anything: “Any sport would take its own Antti Tuisku shouting to its WC.”
For example Cheekin grandfather Väinö Tiihonen was the Olympic representative of ski jumping in 1936. If Cheek, as a wild thought game of course, had been attracted to the sport’s WC event in the days of his glory, maybe someone else would have arrived in addition to the judging judges.
Vesa-Matti Loirin Boxing matches recorded in the 1970s would today also be mind-blowing material for a classic sport struggling for its existence, both in traditional and social media.
Kalevi Hämäläinen famously skied Olympic gold in the 50 km at the Squaw Valley Olympics in 1960, also starting number one. Realist Antti Tuisku never dreamed of such things, let alone WC success.
But in his own way, he was also number one at the Imatra SM event, on the same level as triple champion Hakola.