A large part of the competitions of track and field athletes and swimmers do not qualify as a show for the ministry that distributes grants. The current system needs polishing, writes Atte Husu.
Atte Husuurheilhu reporter
will show the short course WC swimming from Budapest on its channels. You can find the broadcast times here.
Last January, an unbelievable atmosphere prevailed in the office of the Sports Association.
A septuagenarian Saga Vanninen had finished ninth in the 2023 World Championships and achieved the season’s best under-23 result, which was enough for ninth in the world statistics.
In its grant listing, the sports association had pushed for a full 20,000 euro support for the super talent of his age group, born in 2003, but the ministry ended up advocating only 10,000 euro for Vannis.
The amount will hardly increase in a month, when the grant matters are on the table again. This happened despite the fact that Vanninen, whose summer was ruined due to back problems, celebrated the pentathlon indoor silver medal in February 2024.
The reason is the following entry by the ministry:
In those sports that have both Olympic and non-Olympic sports, only the displays of the Olympic sports are taken into account in the evaluation.
In Vanninen’s case, the decisive factor is that the pentathlon is not an Olympic sport. It is a heptathlon indoor competition format.
Case Lahtinen
The same entry is essentially related to Vanninen’s peer, who has been swimming top results in recent months Laura to Lahtin.
Butterfly swimmer Lahtinen has won two World Cup competitions in the 100 meters and swam the 200 meters with the 17th best time of all time, 2:03.13. That would have been enough for fourth place in the World Cup final in Budapest on Thursday.
However, Lahtinen, who swam 2:03.55 in his opening heat, did not get the most out of it in the final and finished eighth.
From Lahtinen’s point of view, what makes the situation absurd is that the above-mentioned results do not weigh in the ministry’s scales, because the swimmer has done them on a short course, i.e. 25 meters.
The ministry’s record only concerns results made in the 50-meter pool used in the Olympics. That’s where Lahtinen swam in the 200 meters on his main course in the summer for a time of 2:10 and finished eighth in the European Championships. It had nothing to do with the Paris Olympics.
Since then, the swimmer from Helsingfors Simsällskap has raised his level considerably and knocked two seconds off his 200 meter record in the short course. Lahtinen benefits from the short track, because he is world class at the start and in his dolphin kicks after the turns.
However, in the expert evaluations, Lahtinen has especially improved his swimming technique to make it more economical. A corresponding record breaking would be realistic also on a long course, if good competitions in the 50-meter pool were now available. But when it isn’t.
Sports expert Ville Kallinen according to Lahtinen, in his current condition, could swim the 200-meter butterfly in the 50-meter course in 2:07–2:08. In Paris, 2:07.53 was enough for the final.
On Thursday, Lahtinen was joined by five of the eight finalists in Paris. When the preliminaries are included, only four of the absolute best in their field swim faster than Lahti in Budapest’s short pool.
If the EC long-course swimming organized in June in Belgrade was colored by the absence of several top countries, there was no information about a corresponding mass loss in Budapest. Vice versa.
The system needs to be hacked
Regarding Vanninen’s case, it must be stated that there were a lot of top heptathlon women missing from the WC halls in Glasgow. Still, it is appropriate to ask whether the second World Cup indoor medal in the history of Finnish athletics and the Finnish record are not enough for the ministry to demonstrate.
If the ministry interprets its record of non-Olympic sports like the damn Bible, in the cases of Vanninen and Lahtinen, the answer is no.
When Urheilu called the domestic sports decision-makers about the issue, their common view was that the current system needs to be refined and more individual evaluation is needed. The vision is easy to sign.
Vanninen and Lahtinen are undoubtedly among the most talented athletes of their age group in their respective sports, who are on the threshold of a breakthrough into the elite of the adult division.
This year, Lahtinen competed with the smallest possible grant, i.e. 6,000 euros. In 2023, the subsidy amount was 10,000 euros.
A return to being a half-stipend athlete is likely, even if the results of the last few months against the world’s best would suggest a full support of 20,000 euros. Lahtinen happened to achieve those results, according to the ministry’s records, only on the wrong track.
will show the short course WC swimming from Budapest on its channels. You can find the broadcast times here.