A significant part of the French and Finns do not know the basic skill of swimming. It would be good to remember it amid the big noise of the Olympics, writes Urheilu’s Roope Visuri.
Roope Visuriruheluth reporter
PARIS. Billion dollar farce. The most incredible egging of the games. Matti Mattsson’s the inheritance is lost.
Among other things, such characterizations have been buzzing in the Finnish media in recent days, when the biggest topics of conversation at the Paris Olympics have been discussed internationally and domestically.
The river Seine, which flows through the city, was not suitable for swimming over the weekend and the beginning of the week, even though one and a half billion euros of money has been put into it. In turn, the problems of Finnish elite swimming will be brought to the attention of every sports consumer at the latest, when both Finnish swimmers Checkmate Mattsson and East The bulk were left in the preliminary rounds.
Both topics are about swimming. However, the basic issue has been left out of the discussion. A significant part of Finnish or French young people cannot swim.
In Finland, the most recent, in 2022, research according to only about 55 percent of sixth graders, i.e. 12-year-olds, know how to swim. In 2016, the corresponding figure was 76 percent.
in France for the 2021 study by with a more demanding definition corresponding to Finnish swimming skills, 73 percent of 13–14-year-old French people can swim. However, the readings vary a lot from region to region.
Of the youth of the French reference age group in the heart of the Paris Olympics, in the Saint Denis area only 67 percent could swim at a basic level in 2019.
So it is pointless to talk about the Seine as a swimming place for all Parisians in the future. It is confusing to think of ways to save Finnish top swimming when the bottom is leaking. A large part of Finnish athlete hopes should reach the surface first.
How can we be proud in Finland that the skill of swimming is no longer a Citizen’s skill at this rate? How can Finland become successful swimmers if at the age of 12, almost half of the age group can’t even swim?
It’s not new, as the years of publication of the most recent results show. Still, in Finland, there was not a very wide social discussion about them.
No, although everyone certainly understands the importance of swimming skills. It is a vital skill in a country like Finland with thousands of lakes.
Matti Mattsson summed it up well in an interview with in April last year: it’s as important as the mother tongue.
I’m not saying that the talk of the Olympics is pointless. The massive Seine project, which reeks strongly of the colossal failure of the Olympic machinery in Paris, and the sluggish level of Finnish elite swimming must be discussed.
Still, you have to ask. Why aren’t the widespread deficiencies of a basic skill like swimming not discussed in capital letters? Why don’t you learn to swim as much as before? What should be done? There should definitely be more of this kind of discussion.