Reactions to the Lahti 2001 TV series reveal more about Finns than we would like. Even with all its clumsiness and mistakes, the series can still clear the air, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen Sports journalist
Ex-head coach of cross-country skiing Kari-Pekka Kyrö said on May 11 2022 for Ilta-Sanom having received a job offer from the Take Two Studios production company. Kyrö would have been wanted as a consultant for the script and shooting phase of the TV series about the 2001 World Cup. The production company couldn’t have asked for more help in this topic.
Kyrö stated that after a very short conversation, it became clear that Take Two Studios’ cameraman does not need his account number for anything.
When the veil of the secret TV project was revealed to the public by the mouth of the ex-head coach, the production company already announced on the same day that they are preparing a series of competitions in which six Finnish skiers were caught for a violation of doping rules, i.e. the use of a plasma expander that lowers blood levels, according to the best available information, a masking agent for heavier blood doping.
Kyrö wasn’t the only deep-headed contemporary the production company turned to. Apparently, it didn’t get help from anyone. The reaction of the first line was once again the same as always when the number one trauma in Finnish sports history comes to the fore: “Vulture-like digging of old wounds!”
According to the stories heard by Urheilu, some of those who received a call for help have reacted mostly with tearful cries, and the so-called Finnish skiing community has been walking in the background, strumming their acoustic guitar. That they dare!
Crying kickers
Since the creators knew, as always in top sports dramatizations, that sport scenes are a bad credibility minefield, young competitive skiers were asked for help as stunt skiers. A significant part of them did not dare to start the project because of the harsh criticism directed at it already in the creation phase, for fear of their own reputation.
When big-name actors were then put in “value skiing”, the private coaching entrepreneurs who taught them would usually have posted the teaching sessions on their social media channels, as a great advertisement. It was quiet now. The reaction of the skiing community, i.e. potential customers, was worrying.
And no Johannes Holopainen really knows how to ski like Mika Myllylälike a well-known manager Aki Pajunoja stated the series after starting. And now the project has not completely gone well in fact-checking, as the undersigned in that same story shows.
Of course, the production company promised that Lahti 2001 is only partially based on real events. That real event and the elephant in the porcelain shop is, of course, the mass cart of six star skiers. In the name of artistic, constitutional freedom of speech, some kind of frame story has been built around it.
Where is the sense of proportion?
When the series, which has become a big topic of conversation, has now skied more than half way with all its business, skiing technique and epochal blunders, it is probably worth stopping for a moment to talk about the sense of proportion.
It is true that nowhere else in the small world of skiing has a reality-based drama series been made about the mass performance of its own athletes. It is because such an event is missing. The Norwegian star of the Lahti Games Frode Estil assured Urheilu that a similar project would certainly have been in the works if something similar to what happened to Finland in 2001 had happened to the host country at the 2011 World Cup in Oslo.
During this autumn, Finns have been offered reality-based TV and film dramas about, among other things, the following events: The sinking of the Estonia ship in 1994 in the Baltic Sea, 852 deaths. Lapua cartridge factory explosion 1976 – from time to eternity 40 people, most of them young mothers of small children.
Of these, I haven’t read of anyone getting wet in their traumatic wound. Of course, that requires a story about six Finnish skiers breaking the rules.
What would it have taken for the series to never have been made? The fact that the athletes or one of them would have openly told what happened under and during the Lahti Games and what kind of sports culture they had to operate in at that time, if there happened to be some kind of success, would be of interest. Looking forward to its soon-to-be 23rd year.