Wilma Murto is ideal as a pole vaulter, says Urheilu’s expert Jaakko Ojaniemi. Murto was already successful at a young age, but needed time to mature into a prize winner.
Urheilu’s expert Jaakko Ojaniemi’s three picks from the European Athletics Championships. This time we focus on the European champion Wilma Murto. Ojaniemi’s extracts can be read every morning on ‘s website and in the app.
1. The ideal pole vaulter
Wilma Murto is Urheilu’s expert Jaakko Ojaniemi considered an ideal pole vaulter. 24-year-old Murto is a 182-centimeter, strong and reaching athlete.
– He has all the good enough qualities to be able to jump high. As a big jumper, he has reach, but is fast enough and technically good. If we add a good head to that, we are pretty close to the ideal, Ojaniemi said.
Ojaniemi reminds that height alone is not useful for a pole vaulter. Long limbs must also be managed.
– Then it takes time for the technology to develop well.
Murto has practiced a variety of athletics, from high-speed fences to shot put and pentathlon to long distance. Sprinting, which I practiced as a youngster, has also provided the basis for pole vaulting.
– Now Wilma has also been able to use sufficiently large paddles. In the final, you could see that the jumps kept getting higher at the same pace as the bar. He was now able to measure that potential, which has been a bit hidden.
2. After the backwater phase, matured into a value competition winner
Six years ago, Wilma Murto jumped the youth world record and women’s Finnish record 465. She was 18 years old at the time. After the success, however, difficult times followed. There were injuries and the jump got stuck. In the end, he applied for another rise first By Steve Rippon training and after Mikko Latvala. However, Murto returned quite quickly Jarno Koivunen to coaching, which has coached Murto since junior.
– Development came to Wilma at a very young age and after that there was a backwater phase. He might not have been ready to face that success in that, but now he has matured as an athlete, Ojaniemi estimates.
He believes that the changes of coach between autumn 2018 and November 2019 also raised the young jumper.
– He has probably applied for all kinds of things, when the matter could not go forward. Then things have fallen into place, above all inside the head, and the situation has started to go in the right direction.
One important thing in Murro’s development has been cooperation with a sports psychologist Hannaleena Ronkainen with, which has lasted for four years already. When Murto has been mentally strong enough, there has also been success in value competitions, and that has brought more self-confidence.
– Now was the right time for such a super success.
3. Flow mode removed the limiters
In Wednesday’s pole vault final, Wilma Murto improved her Finnish record three times and by no less than 13 centimetres. The new Finnish record is now 485. According to Jaakko Ojaniemi, such an improvement is not impossible when the athlete gets the flow mode on.
– Wilma said that when the medal was secured, the feeling was released and the flow came on. That’s when all the limiters went off. There was nothing he couldn’t jump anymore, Ojaniemi stated.
– Wilma felt that it didn’t matter what happened, she wanted to win the race. But even though she had charm mode on and the potential has been a bit hidden, that has hardly come as a surprise to Wilma herself. He has certainly sensed his potential in training.
Murto didn’t shy away from using stiffer fins in the final, which he made work quite well. From them he got the necessary help for his jumps.
In Ojaniemi’s opinion, the self-confidence of the cool-headed value jumper exuded throughout the final, and he does not believe that the situation will change in any way in the future.
– Now those possibilities open up to completely new dimensions of what he himself believes in from now on. The roof was raised quite a lot.
The European Championship week in Munich can be seen on channels from August 11 to 21. You can find live broadcasts, highlights, the competition schedule, interesting news and topics on ‘s competition page.