– Did you get a good picture?
National team skier, World Cup medalist Johanna Matintaloa smiles, even though the woman resembles a bathed dog. The torrential rain that battered Vuokatti in Sotkamo for two days has been Matintalo’s constant companion during the two-hour roller skiing practice on the road going up to Vuokatinvaara. Five times ascent a stretch of about 1,500 meters at the upper limits of speed endurance, sometimes on the side of maximum endurance.
– I still prefer this weather to the heat a hundred times for strength training, the skier says.
During the training, Matintalo has tuned up his body with half an hour of brisk roller skiing. After the uphill pulls, there is a similar but calm final warm-up ahead.
And the answer to the question: it turned out to be an excellent picture. Even in July, the daily life of a cross-country skier is sometimes rough, but visually spectacular.
New stimuli
However, the career of Matintalo, who reached the podium of the World Cup in sprint skiing last season, is now being stimulated by completely new stimuli.
After all, Matintalo’s long-time coach is not sitting in the car that transports the athlete from the uphill to danger Ville Oksanenbut his namesake, last year’s World Cup medalist and long-time national team skier Ville Nousiainen39.
The coaching relationship is over two months behind, when Matintalo climbs up Vuokatinvaara in the morning of July 22 with his stronger i.e. traditional technique.
– Last spring Oksanen Ville and I felt unanimously and agreeably that it would probably be better for me to look for a new coaching pattern. We were looking for a good World Cup success, but we failed. The level of performance was too uneven across the board, despite individual top successes, Matintalo says.
At the turn of the year 2022-23, he even looked like a potential traditional sprint WC medalist, so 26th place in Planica was a shocking disappointment.
Felt superficially
In Planica, Nousiainen, who analyzed Matintalo’s performances from the field, i.e. as an expert in Urheilu, still couldn’t wait for what was to come. He previously knew Matintalo quite superficially, for example from a short stint together in the A national team at the end of the last decade. He saw untapped potential in the athlete, as an outsider, but never imagined that he would end up foreclosing on it himself.
– I looked at the phone screen to see that Johanna was calling. There wasn’t much small talk when he said he wanted to get straight to the point and asked me to be his coach. Yes, it came completely out of the blue.
Although Nousiainen also works as a coaching entrepreneur and has previously coached, among other things, his now deceased wife Mona-Liisa from Nousia and biathlon Tuomas Grönmanthe challenge seemed tough.
– You don’t start coaching a top athlete of that level lightly. I had to think for a week. And there wouldn’t have been more time, because Johanna was going on vacation and wanted this matter resolved before then.
Nousiainen spent his thinking week intensively researching Matintalo’s training background from the data provided by the skier, i.e. training programs, implementation and test results.
Red thread
– It revealed that a lot of things have been done with high quality. The red thread was easily found there.
But there was more:
– If Johanna had practiced in such a way that I would not have seen any need for change, I would probably have politely answered no, thank you. But when I saw the need for change, and Johanna specifically wanted change, so now we are here.
Why then did Matintalo end up with this particular option? Her common-law spouse, a national team sprint skier, had a very strong influence on the matter Lauri Vuorinen. The couple living in Rovaniemi settled in Vuokatti in Sotkamo for the entire summer training season.
– I was going through a few different names in my mind. Lauri assured me that Ville would be a good option for me and I listened to him.
When Nousiainen was already an experienced race horse, he fatherly guided the junior pledges of the Kouvola Ski Club, i.e. the mountains and Lauri Lepistö, even invited them to his home for a one-week training camp. Vuorinen’s appreciation is inherited from these times together.
– Although Johanna’s career comes first, this is also a huge opportunity for me to develop as a coach. Of course, I can’t automatically promise Johanna anything. It may not be successful, but at least it has been tried.
26 hour week
During the joint Vuokatin week between coach and athlete, Matintalo practiced for about 26 hours, and there were four exercises classified as developmental.
There were no workouts that pushed forward maximum performance in the program, because the musculature tired by the intense amount of training is not particularly receptive to them in July. Their time will come later in the fall.
The 2023–24 season is a rarity, i.e. no value competition.
– It is no coincidence that I applied for a new coaching solution right now. This kind of timing gives us peace of mind, says Matintalo.
Nousiainen praises certain properties of Matintalo as belonging to “world class”.
– As an old middle-distance runner, Johanna endures the discomfort area really well and is otherwise very resistant to training. Loppukiri comes off in a sprint in a model way. Even for free technique, he has a hugely better preparation than the results so far.
The training of a 26-year-old athlete of Matintalo’s caliber cannot be revolutionized anymore, as the two readily admit.
– But clear points of development are, for example, strengthening the aerobic base and speed endurance base, as well as the flat push of traditional skiing. If we manage to strengthen that foundation, Johanna’s performance level will definitely stabilize.
Nousiainen is only occasionally coaching Matintalo, so trust and the athlete’s own ability to train and interpret themselves are very important.
– That’s how it should be in endurance sports. The coach can’t be there putting everything in place. When Johanna and I are hanging out, I’m on roller skates a lot, and my habit is to comment on the technique very actively in different areas. Of course you can tell me to shut up.
Many irons in the fire
Nousiainen would have enough talk without Matintalo’s coaching. After losing his wife to cancer in 2019, he became a single parent and rolled up his sleeves in the middle of his grief work.
– A bank loan is a tough consultant.
Nousiainen, who came home from the 2009 World Championships in Liberec with two relay bronze medals, works with various partners as a coaching entrepreneur and a sports equipment retailer, will analyze skiing in the Urheilu team next season and will start in the fall as a product manager for cream manufacturer Vauhti Speed Oy.
– You have to do a lot of all kinds of work to be able to afford to coach top Finnish athletes in individual sports, the man laughs.
Although fully professional elite sports coaching is not current for Nousiainen in any way, he agrees to outline what it could be like:
– In practice, you should live in Vuokatti and coach a group of three or at most four skiers full-time and make a living from it. Or to be a coach in the Ski Federation, but that job would require too many travel days for a single parent.
The new coach from Matintalo has so far only billed his own expenses.