Three-time Olympic champion Iivo Niskanen, 31, says that he left Finland once after the end of the ski season. He already visited Stockholm’s Elitloppet trotting event at the end of May.
At that time, the four-time Sportsman of the Year, like his national team mates, had already noted in dismay that national borders would not need to be crossed this summer even in the context of the A national team’s training camps.
Due to the catastrophic financial situation of the ski association, about a third of the head coach’s camp budget had been cut, and no Teemu Pasanen could only promise its athletes one Italian camp in August and one Austrian glacier camp in October.
The switch went up
When the national A teams were announced at the beginning of June, Iivo Niskanen had decided to pull the plug on the activity. His absence from the squad was big news, which the man agreed to put in the background only now, when Urheilu met him on midsummer in the hot Puijo in Kuopio.
– When the camp program turned out the way it turned out, you didn’t even have to think. A few times in previous years, I had thought about such a solution, but now I even considered it necessary to make my own solutions in order to be in a condition for international success next season, Niskanen said before his afternoon roller skiing practice.
For the season starting in November, Niskanen craves above all a victory in the 50 km (p) race of the Oslo World Cup.
Big disappointment
Niskanen, who channeled a lot of money to the skiing association, admitted that the revelation of the financial situation like this just a year after a skiing season with six Olympic medals was a big disappointment.
– It was a big surprise that at this point the situation turned out to be so worrying.
Withdrawing from the national team also means that Niskanen is not at all covered by an athlete contract that restricts national team athletes, for example in terms of advertising visibility, but he can be very innovative in financing his own project. Own sponsors play a big role in the game.
– This is a heavy financial investment, but it had to be done this way to ensure competitiveness.
According to the athlete, the fact that there are no value competitions next season didn’t really weigh on the scales.
– If there had been such a limited national team program, I would have made the same decision during the prestigious competition season as well, said Niskanen, who will return to the A national team in November and sign an athlete contract before the Kuusamo World Cup.
– If the screens are enough for that, he added, most obviously with humor.
Pärmäkoski previous
The previous top name that made the same decision regarding the national team was Krista Pärmäkoskiwho was on his own during the training period before the 2019–2020 season.
Iivo Niskanen says that there were few attempts to exaggerate the direction of the Ski Federation, and not even a word of surprise was heard from his own national team mates.
– It wasn’t a huge surprise for them. The others are not satisfied with the situation either, stated Niskanen, who cannot see his solution as selfish in any way in such a crisis situation of the union.
Niskanen, who won the first big relay medal of his career at the World Championships in Planica last winter, assures that he has nothing in his teeth about national team activities.
– It would be desirable if the Ski Federation offered the A national team a camping package like before, then I could very well be involved again.
Head coach Pasanen approaches the situation calmly and understandingly. The spaces to the first name are fine.
– We talk regularly. If you’re looking for the biggest minus, now the national team gatherings are missing the measuring stick of the absolute top of the world.
The dipstick left
Niskanen’s personal trainer Olli Ohtonen says that a drastic solution came into consideration after the financial situation of the Ski Association was revealed – and after it was reflected so radically in the A national team’s activities.
– It is true that Iivo had been weighing something like this for several springs.
Niskanen’s decision significantly changes Ohtonen’s role. The coach travels along on all training trips for at least almost the entire time.
When they finally get on their skis, the national team’s and Niskanen’s long-time ski maestro also starts to go along. Mika Venäläinen.
– It has a support team whose skills do not need to be guessed at, says Niskanen.
He eats his daily rye bread in Kuopio and Vuokatti from June to July. Three weeks of August will be spent in Norway, where Niskanen will participate in the Blink endurance sports event in southern Norway and the Toppidrettsveka event in central Norway. In addition to competing, the program includes training in Norway.
World Cup scouting trip
Niskanen visits Trondheim’s renovated World Cup tracks on roller skis and runs for the winter of 2025. The Norwegian star, who was left out of the national team, also trains in the same scenery Johannes Hösflot Kläbo.
– I haven’t agreed anything with him, but I’m not ruling anything out either. The most likely training partner in Trondheim would probably be Emil Iversen.
Later in the fall, Niskanen goes to a ski camp on the Ramsau glacier, if it is in skiing condition. Otherwise, training will probably continue in Italy’s Livigno and in November in Olos in Muonio.
The Val Senales glacier, a traditional October training place in northern Italy, cannot be reached this year due to lift renovations.
– It is not an impossible idea that the first contact with snow skiing would come only in Olos, says Olli Ohtonen.
The first head coach of Niskanen’s national team career, who has a good relationship with the superstar Magnar Dale got in touch as soon as he heard about Niskanen being left alone. He promised to use his contacts to arrange a training resource for Finns from Norway if necessary.
Niskanen laughed that if the activities of the A national team were as they were during Dalen’s prime, there would have been very few reasons to leave.
– Back then, we went high once a month, because we knew that the bar for success was set that way.