Social media admires the emotional state of Wimbledon champion Harri Heliövaara. Heliövaara’s winning pair, Henry Patten, once worked at Wimbledon – as a statistician.
On Saturday night, Harri Heliövaara became the grand slam champion, the winner of the legendary Wimbledon. The Finn overthrew his British partner of Henry Patten with Australians by Max Purcell and by Jordan Thompson.
The match was a wild, almost three-hour thriller, with all sets ending in a tie-break. In the second set, Heliövaara and Patten cleared three opponent’s championship balls.
When the match ended with Heliövaara serving and the opponent hitting the net, the emotional celebration began. Patten, 28, sank to his knees.
Heliövaara, 35, first lifted his shirt in front of his face. Then she held her head in disbelief until she seemed to burst into tears of happiness.
Then Heliövaara ordered the opponents and judges to shake hands until the celebration continued. Heliövaara was also in tears when the two sat on their benches on the side of the field.
After the match, Heliövaara stated in an interview with the winners that “tears tell everything”.
Finns have been able to enjoy Heliövaara’s wild, theatrical and funny performances before, for example with the Davis Cup success. For international followers, this could be their first contact with the Finnish doubles star.
Soon after the match, a lot of messages started to appear on social media, in which people were amazed and admired how Heliövaara felt after the match.
– This immediately became one of the best post-match parties. Was able to see how the enormous significance of that moment took them step by step, one wrote in X.
– Anyone who has gotten the impression that Finns don’t show their emotions should watch Harri Heliövaara’s reaction to the doubles championship. Fantastic, wrote one.
– Heliövaara is such a down-to-earth guy. Tears of joy, but he made sure to thank his opponents and the referee. What a final match! wrote Canadian journalist Jacob Pacheco.
On Some, it was brought up that Heliövaara stopped his career for four years and studied for a master’s degree in engineering, until he returned to the ring as a four-player in 2017. One can rightly talk about a cinderella story.
It was also admired in the social media comments that Heliövaara keeps his own tennis blog, where he writes about the sport and his own feelings about it.
– Patten and Heliövaara’s celebration was one of the best ever, one tightly.
– Noise danger in a flood of happy tears. Awesome reaction, someone write.
– Harri Heliövaara has shown exactly the kind of reaction that we who are interested in sports love to see. Unlimited joy. Congratulations to him and Harry Patten, Wimbledon champions, X is glowing.
– Harri Heliövaara is the funniest celebrant in tennis, let’s line up.
If Heliövaara’s story is incredible, the same can be said about Patten.
While in college, Patten spent two summers working for IBM. At the time, he was also working at Wimbledon – courtside doing statistics.
– From an IBM statistician to a finalist in the doubles game, was the title of the Independent, for example his story before the final.
Patten only started as a tennis professional in 2020 and moved to doubles in 2022. He had never advanced beyond the third round in grand slams before this.
When Heliövaara and Patten started together this spring, the aftermath has been wild. The duo has participated in eight tournaments and won five of them.
The victories are as follows: ATP tournament in Marrakech, Morocco, ATP Challenger tournament in Madrid, ATP tournament in Bucharest, ATP Challenger level tournament in Turin and grand slam victory in Wimbledon.