The Finnish team made its best Olympic result in 20 years in Beijing. In the medal table, the 16th place will be considerably brighter if the sample is limited only to the species in which the Finns were involved.
Two golds, two silver medals and four bronzes brought Finland 16th place in the Beijing Olympic medals table. Although Finland’s medal balance was the best in 20 years, the ranking is in line with the previous four Winter Olympics: in Turin in 2006 the team was 19th, in 2010 Vancouver 24th and in 2014 Sochi and in 2018 Pyeongchang 18th.
Finnish athletes competed in Beijing in alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, figure skating, freestyle, hockey, combined ski jumping and snowboarding. Curling and speed skating fell from the race of four years ago in Beijing.
Of the two medals, six came from cross-country skiing and two from hockey. The balance of cross-country skiing was 1 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze. Hockey brought 1 gold and 1 bronze.
The result of the Finnish team competing in Beijing can be viewed from many points of view. One of these is to limit the comparison of results to the species in which the Finns were involved.
Doing so will, of course, exclude major winter sports countries such as the Netherlands, which made the worst result since the 2010 Vancouver Games, but still caught 8 gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze. The medals came from speed skating, long-distance skating and sledding – that is, more sports than in Finland.
In any case, if the analysis of the results focuses only on Finnish sports, the Finnish team will be the sixth most successful in the medal statistics.
When assessing the opportunities for Finns at the 2026 Cortina d’Ampezzo and Milan Winter Olympics, it is worth starting with a reflection on the sports in which the Finns were represented in Beijing. According to the results of Beijing, in order to achieve the medal in four years, the main resistance of the Finns will come from Norway, Russia and Sweden.