“I wonder if it makes sense to continue” – Oliver Helander, who was close to quitting, talks about an accident that changed everything

“Wilma, do you have any answers?”

Oliver Helander leaning back in her chair and screaming towards the bedrooms, where the unmarried spouse is hiding the camera of Sportliv.

Helander has just been asked to describe himself as a person. After a moment’s pause, he forwards the question.

“What did you say, what kind of person are you? Well, at least you’re really calm,” reads the room next door.

Helander, 25, turns back.

– Okay, now I can answer, he says and continues.

– I am a calm person in everyday life. Even lazy. On the sports side, the situation is different. There I am really determined.

Coach more than one hundred kilometers east of Vaasa Tero Pitkämäki confirm the characterization. Helander is harsh on himself in a training situation and doesn’t accept failures – a must-have feature if he is going to top the world, the seven-time value medalist says.

Pitkämäki also wants to expand the image of his trainee. Oliver Helander is more than that gloomy vaginal mouth that has stepped in front of TV cameras after sluggish value performances.

– I would like the easy-going, funny and happy guy to show more in the public image. Because that’s what Oliver really is.

He can at least find healthy self-irony. The answer to the question that sets him apart from former big throwers like Pitkämäki comes lightning fast, spiced with a cunning smile.

– They have succeeded in the championships and I have come home between him.

“No gentleman. Too much pressure!”

Three failed putts in a row while Sportliv shoots next.

Oliver Helander is a skilled frisbee golfer. In addition to handball and athletics, the sport was one of the favorite hobbies of the Karelian boy as a child. At most, Helander has owned over a hundred frisbets, now he has only thirty left.

He just retrieves the frisbee that pasted the basket, focuses, and tries again. Everything hits.

– I think I have a good competitive head. As long as I can stay healthy and show my true potential.

– Someone told me that I am the first javelin thrower from Finland to qualify three times in a row. In that way, I guess I’m historical.

Helander laughs. Today, he is able to recall his value racing experiences with humor. Injuries have plagued him every time, and he assures that it’s not that nerve control has failed.

– It is really important to believe in yourself, and if you compete when injured, self-confidence is rarely at the level it should be. I think I am mentally strong. Someone else may disagree, but I don’t care.

Tero Pitkämäki seems most surprised when asked about Helander’s mental qualities.

– I’m not worried about the mental side. Oliver gets very well out of himself in a competitive situation, he is on a completely different level than in training. The difference is still much bigger than it was for me, the coach says and emphasizes the following sentence:

– That’s his strength.

What about the weaknesses then? Unfortunately, they are easy to detect.

Oliver Helander sits in his apartment in Vaasa and stares at the phone. Suddenly his eyebrows rise towards the ceiling and he puts his hand on his face. “Humble type,” he says, laughing a little embarrassed.

He has just watched an old news clip from the fall of 2012 in which 15-year-old Oliver Helander coolly states he has little to no weakness as a javelin thrower.

Of course, there was no such thing as a full bunny, especially if you look at the throwing technique. Its foundations were laid as early as childhood.

After seeing Tero Pitkämäki set a record of 91.53 in Kuortane in the summer of 2005, eight-year-old Oliver asked his parents for a spear. He then threw it in the backyard at Karelia. At times he rushed in, opened the computer and studied Pitkämäki and another idol Andreas Thorkildsen technology from Youtube.

Hours in the backyard and later Glenn Lignellin under the watchful eye of the sports field led to a simple but very efficient technical performance.

– Although javelin throwing is a difficult sport for others, it has always felt really easy for me. It has something that felt natural from a young age, the former national team handball player says.

– If I were shown one throw from Oliver and I didn’t know anything about the man, I would say that he is probably really sure to throw, Pitkämäki says.

He especially praises the pace. Helander’s focus does not fluctuate at all, and the spear lies like a rack as he approaches the line. Pitkämäki says he has never seen such a good and stable pace.

And it is certainly not the practice of one of the best javelin throwers of the 21st century to use overtones in vain.

– If and when Oliver gets more competitive performances and self-confidence rises, I think he will become one of the surest throwers there has been in Finland or in the world.

Although single spikes have been made so far, injuries have made steady execution difficult.

Tolerating pain was one thing when the problem was “just” the shoulder. As the Achilles tendon also began to do its tricks before the World Cup in Doha, it became impossible to rule out pain in a throwing situation.

– I knew that if the outrigger holds, it will really hurt. No matter how you try to think “now I’m doing this,” the body is rubbing against it, Helander describes.

In other words, weakness is as obvious as difficult to resolve. Helander summarizes:

The last four seasons have been unlawfully broken. Injuries and pain have led to inadequate throwing practice and technique, which in turn have led to new problems. A vicious and tenacious vicious circle.

The ground contact came in Orimattila in June last year. Helander interrupted the race after three laps and an equal number of overshooted throws, and the body broke everywhere.

– I wonder if it really makes any sense to continue. That should stop if this doesn’t become anything and there’s a problem all the time.

It was a really important throw for my career. Especially for self-confidence and psyche.

Oliver Helander

Helander scrambled up from his pit and secured the Olympic place a month later in the final round of the Joensuu qualifying round. Antti Ruuskanen.

After Tokyo, however, he felt empty. He needed change. Helander picked up the phone and called Tero Pitkämäki, who responded positively to the offer to start as his coach.

At the same time, the collaboration with Glenn Lignell, which began when Helander was 14 years old, ended.

– A couple, the last three years have not gone the way I would have liked. I haven’t been broken because of Glenn, but it felt like I needed a new spark for my career.

The decision of a long collaboration was both beautiful and important.

In the last race at the Tampere Kaleva race at the end of August, Helander’s weak season seemed to continue. Before the third round, he was far from the top with a score of 72.50. Then banged: 86.13 – the third longest throw of the career and the second SM gold.

A smile rises on Helander’s face as he sits on his couch less than a year later watching the race off the tape.

– It was a really important throw for my career. Especially for self-confidence and psyche. After a difficult summer, I proved to myself and everyone else that I still have the potential to throw far.

Admittedly, few have suspected that. Concerns have been – and still are – about continuity.

The next archive clip makes Helander grimace. He turns his gaze away and closes his eyes.

The video is four years old. Helander will stumble and crash at the Stars Festival in Raseborg on the Karjaa field, which is so familiar to him, on June 17, 2018.

At first, it seemed that the situation was overcome with fright. It is now known that the accident has followed Helander like a shadow for the past four years.

– The career was one ascendant and it felt like nothing could stop me, Helander describes his situation before the crash that set off a whole gloomy injury spiral.

Since then, the shoulder has been messed up with patterns. Time after time. He threw a record of 88.02 in Pietarsaari a few weeks later, but the problems were beneath the surface.

The theme for this season is clear: throwing. There will be a lot of repetitions in the rehearsals, and a competition routine will be sought from the competitions, which will bring certainty to the performances towards the summer World Cup and European Championships. However, this plan has already had to be modified.

The first training period under Pitkämäki was rarely intact and the shoulder muscles were strengthened during the winter. However, the shoulder ached after the opening race of the season and a cortisone spike that worked last summer was chosen for treatment.

It helped again and at the Paavo Nurmi Games, Helander blew up the bank, throwing himself into Finland’s fourth ever record with 89.83.

Four days later, he withdrew from the Kuortane GP because of shoulder sensations.

Wild potential – fragile body. The 25-year-old Helander simply has too few throwing drills behind him as an adult for his physique to fully withstand both the extremely consuming species and the javelin throw at the moment.

– Oliver’s future as a javelin thrower depends very much on whether he stays healthy these next few years and whether he can compete enough. If the problems continue for the next couple of years, then it will be difficult. There is enough potential and performance for whatever, Tero Pitkämäki says.

If the shoulder ailments calm down and if no new injuries appear and if the race rate can be tightened and if the basic level can be raised through it, then the goals for the season are clear.

Helander finally wants to prove that he is a qualified value shooter by winning both the Eugene World Championships in July and the Munich European Championships in August.

Whatever the summer comes, the main goal of the Helander-Pitkämäki pair is already two years away at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Helander is going to be at the top of his career there – and he will not hide his goals.

– The goal is to throw 90 meters and win Olympic gold in Paris, he says without hesitation.

– As an athlete, you have to have difficult but realistic goals. In my opinion, the next natural step in my career would be to win a medal of honor.

Editor: Janne Isaksson