The treatment of a research institute that produces important data in order to achieve small savings further strengthens the image that the Olympic Committee is a sports house, not an elite sports house, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen sports reporter
Head coach of the cross country team Teemu Pasanen read congratulatory messages on his phone for a long time as the Beijing Olympic cross-country skiing competitions in Zhangjiakou ended on February 20, 2022 Kerttu Niskanen to the bronze medal in 30 kilometers (year). Finland took the six-medal jackpot in terms of ski maintenance and all other support measures in very difficult, paranoid corona measures.
Team player Pasanen immediately brought up one of the most important elements in terms of achieving results, i.e. the cross country team’s intensive cooperation with the top sports research institute, Kihu from Jyväskylä. Examples of cooperation were, for example, laboratory testing of athletes’ performance at home during the Olympics, as well as vital, continuous load control in high-altitude camps abroad.
Perhaps the most important figure on the axis of the Ski Federation-Olympic Committee’s elite sports unit-Kihu-Jyväskylä University’s Vuokatin unit was the so-called little ski project. The Finns’ equipment worked brilliantly at the Games. It was the result of enormous field, research and logistical work, the hardest Olympic-level background work successes in the recent history of Finnish top sports.
Straight line correlation
Everything went well, but there was nothing dramatic in itself. This is Kihu’s everyday job – multidisciplinary helping of athletes and background forces with all possible permitted means, with the help of the latest technology and research information. In the sights, a straight line correlation from help to success, turning fourth places into bronze medals and turning bronze medals into gold medals.
When the Olympic Games are approaching, the elite sports unit typically distributes training money to the sports, which the sports can then use, for example, on Kihu’s services to improve their skiing success.
Founded in 1990, Kihu’s cooperation with the Olympic Committee has of course always been very close; even now In Kihu’s government, they influence Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Olympic Committee Tapio Korjus and the director of the elite sports unit, who used and appreciated Kihu’s services very much in his skiing career Matti Heikkinen.
Against this background, it is very interesting to see what kind of mandate and mood the Olympic Committee’s big men are sitting on the board with, because the committee decided at the end of 2022 to terminate the long-standing framework agreement with Kihu. It has been frozen since New Year’s Day 2023.
Marginal activity
For a long time, Finnish top sports circles have watched with horror how top sports has become mostly a marginal activity in the Olympic Committee, and its voice is no longer heard from the organization that has been inflated into a huge dough. The Kihu decision made in order to achieve small savings can sadly be considered as one new nail in the lid of that coffin.
Termination of the framework agreement with Finland’s only relevant research house with its finger on the pulse of elite sports resulted in savings of 150,000 euros for the Olympic Committee. Olympic Committee website adventurer would perhaps have found other savings targets, each of course according to their own world of values.
The Paris Olympic Games are half a year away, and Kihu, which is one of the essential cornerstones of every competition project in Finland, is being run without funding from the Olympic Committee. The situation can be considered interesting; it is not appropriate.
The Olympic Committee wants a new, more favorable framework agreement with Kihu. It is a complex web of money flows, where ultimately, of course, both sides argue about the money.
Kihu’s new CEO, looking for money at market conditions with a flashlight Arto Kuusisto and the operational management of the Olympic Committee are looking for a solution. It might be worth speeding up. The Olympic flame in Paris will indeed be lit in 178 nights.