No rainmaker can be found to succeed Matti Heikkinen. The fate of a top sports director is also an embarrassing failure from the employer, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen sports reporter
With the head of the elite sports unit Matti Heikkinen had very pleasant memories from Vierumäki sports college until last Saturday. He returned there in a festive mood from the Lahti stadium on March 5, 2017, when the 50 km final distance of the World Championships on an icy track had brought the fourth and last medal of his career, a bronze.
Heikkinen, who had been elevated to the top of the top sports pyramid by the merits of his sports career, was now able to experience that the floor of the cabinets is indeed icy and slippery.
Last Saturday, at the end of its fall meeting in Vierumäki, the board of the Olympic Committee announced to Heikkinen face to face that the work as director of the elite sports unit will end immediately and the deputy director of the unit will leave with the same door opening. Leena Paavolainen.
Until the information Communications Director of the Olympic Committee Mika Noronen got to shape the harvest of the fall meeting on Wednesday. If you are interested in Pesti Heikkinen’s successor, you should visit the Olympic Committee’s website on Friday. Then it is told what is expected and required from the next rainmaker and what is offered to him.
Severance pay on the table
The Olympic Committee says cryptically that Heikkinen will not continue as a top sports director. From this, even without a docent, one could interpret that the world champion’s career in the Olympic Committee would continue, so to speak, in other positions. But the explanation is more mundane, typical in these situations.
Heikkinen will negotiate with the CEO in the next few days Taina Susiluoto with about what kind of money will be recorded in his termination agreement. As a lame duck, Heikkinen is not stuck in the committee.
The departure of Paavolainen, who was exhausted by his workload over the years, was more suitable, and there are also pressing personal reasons.
Knowing the historic zero result of the Paris Olympic Games with the athlete protests that followed the Games, the trust management of the Olympic Committee and the operational command bridge must have felt the big pressure of change in their skins.
It’s a different matter whether the right people still bear the responsibility. That kind of thing is very rare in Finnish sports, as, for example, ice hockey coaches know very well.
The cold fact is, however, that in 2022, both the board of the Olympic Committee at the time and Matti Heikkinen – the recruiter and the recruit – were guilty of a big misjudgment. When the employer still drew a completely wrong road map for his top employee on the successful management of a top sports unit, the end result is logical.
Heikkinen profiled himself to the staff as a remote Teams and Zoom manager stuck in his hometown Jyväskylä, who in the end didn’t get any hold of the unit. It’s a public secret that the actual head of the unit was Leena Paavolainen during Heikkinen’s bossship, who didn’t even want to mention it. Heikkinen made a bad miscalculation and no longer had time to correct his operating methods, i.e. to start the real management of the unit after two years of work.
Cold numbers of worms
The Olympic Committee’s press release on Wednesday reads cold numbers for Finnish top sports. Personnel changes would now offer an opportunity to modify the role and roles of the entire elite sports unit, but there is no indication of that.
When you know the huge dissatisfaction of the member organizations of the Olympic Committee with the result of the Paris Olympics and through it, of course, with the elite sports unit, the drastic decisions must also be seen by the likely second term of the presidency Jan Vapaavuoren as a clever election trick. The captain of the reserve did not lie down in the fire.
Who will replace Heikkinen? Left for silver in 2022, Heikkinen’s destiny already early predicted Valentin Kononen is hardly available anymore. Tuomas Sammelvuo? Janne Hänninen? Jarmo Risk? The base of the domestic, at least on some level, realistic candidate list is suddenly splitting. The search is global. Would it be the turn of team sports?
The worst mistake would be to even imagine that there is any kind of rain or miracle maker to be found. The problems of Finnish top sports are so deep that the most suitable education for a top sports director would be an archaeologist.