Sami Hyypiä, Juha Kankkunen, Mika Kohonen and Riitta Salin have been elected to the Hall of Fame of Finnish sports.
Four new members have been elected to the Hall of Fame of Finnish Sports. The selections were announced on Sunday at ‘s Sports Studio. The new members of the gallery of honor will receive their Uno uprights as usual at the Sports Gala on Thursday.
Four sports legends were elected to the Hall of Fame this year.
Riitta Salin
A sprinter Riitta Salin won the European championship in 1974 in 400 meters with the then world record time of 50.14. In the same year, she was chosen as Finland’s Athlete of the Year, only the second female athlete in history.
Salin ran in the Finnish women’s 4×400 meter relay team in five prestigious competitions between 1969 and 1976, three times in the European Championships and twice in the Olympics. The best achievement for the relay team also came at the European Championships in Rome in 1974, where Salin anchored the Finnish women to silver with a still valid Finnish record time.
Juha Kankkunen
Four-time rally car world champion Juha Kankkunen is the only Finnish driver who has won an individual World Championship title with cars from three different teams. He has also been on the podium in the World Cup rallies the most times among Finnish drivers, 75 times.
Born in Laukaa, Kankkunen won his first World Rally Championship in 1985 in Kenya. The following season, he won the world championship with Peugeot. In 1987 and 1991 he won the world championships with Lancia and in 1993 with Toyota.
He won a total of 23 World Series competitions in his career. Kankkunen was the first rally car driver to be chosen Sportsman of the Year after his fourth world championship in 1993.
sami Hyypiä
A football legend sami Hyypiä won the Champions League, the UEFA Cup and the traditional English FA Cup in his career. After four Veikkausliiga seasons, Voikkaan Pallo-Peikkou’s grown up moved to Willem II in Holland in 1995. The peak years of his career 1999–2009 The central defender played in the English Liverpool. He won the Champions League with the club in 2005.
Hyypiä, who played more than 450 matches in the traditional club, also served as captain in the club, as in the Finnish national team. The topper, who finished his playing career in the German Bayer Leverkusen, was chosen as Finland’s Athlete of the Year in 2001.
Mika Kohonen
Four-time floorball world champion and ten-time World Cup medalist in the sport Mika Kohonen was voted the world’s best floorball player five times in his career. Kohonen played a record 194 men’s international matches, where he collected a record 255 power points.
The center forward played in the Swedish league for a total of 16 seasons, 10 of which in the ranks of Storvreta IBK from Uppsala. In 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, Kohonen was chosen as the best player in the world in the polls of the Swedish Innebandymagazinet.
Kohonen represented Finland 11 times at the World Championships between 1998 and 2018. He also became Finland’s all-time best scorer in the World Cup statistics. Mika Kohonen is the first floorball representative in the Finnish Sports Hall of Fame.
The Finnish Sports Gala will be seen live on on Thursday, January 11. The gala starts with the early evening awards at 18:00 in Areena and in the app. On TV2, the gala broadcast starts at 20:00.