Two leaders of the Olympic Committee are leaving their positions.
16:12•Updated 17:01
The Olympic Committee informs that Matti Heikkinen will no longer continue as a top sports director. Leena Paavolainen on the other hand, will not continue as the director of sports and competition programs, nor in the service of the Olympic Committee.
According to the release of the Olympic Committee, the application process for a new top sports director has started. The practical matters related to the elite sports unit and its management will be informed in more detail later.
On the closing day of the Paris Olympics, in the information of the Finnish team, Heikkinen stated that he will only be in the groove of the halfway point of his race, which will end in the summer of 2026.
Paavolainen worked for the Olympic Committee in management positions of the elite sports unit from 2013. Paavolainen was part of the leadership of the Finnish Olympic team in six Olympics.
– 12 years of work at the top sports unit of the Olympic Committee has been a rewarding, but very intense time. Now it’s time to recover for a while, but after that I still want to see what new opportunities the field of Finnish top sports has to offer, Paavolainen states in the press release.
The three main choices remain
The Olympic Committee said in its announcement that the Olympic Committee’s board met last weekend in Vierumäki. The meeting discussed the top sports unit’s analysis of the Paris Olympics. At the same time, the situation and future of elite sports were discussed.
For the first time, Finland was left without medals at the Summer Olympics earlier this summer in Paris. The board of the Olympic Committee will continue dealing with elite sports issues at its next meeting on September 23.
The Board of the Olympic Committee stated that the three top choices of the Olympic Committee’s strategy (exercise and an active lifestyle, club activities and elite sports) form a natural whole and support each other. Therefore, there is no need for a higher-level strategic reassessment of the work of the Olympic Committee.
– We are concerned about the situation in elite sports and we had a good and in-depth discussion about how to improve the situation. The result of the Summer Olympics in Paris is disappointing. Although summer Olympic success is only one part of the overall goals of Finnish elite sports, the government takes the matter seriously and has therefore decided to take many measures to improve the situation, the chairman of the Olympic Committee Jan Vapaavuori stated in the announcement.
We want changes to the support system
The Olympic Committee’s press release also presents several change measures for Finnish elite sports. After the Paris Olympics, for example, support money has been talked about. According to the press release, the board of the Olympic Committee emphasizes the support system as one of the change measures.
– The support system must be developed in a direction where clearer choices are made than before to ensure that potential medal candidates, their coaches and other background groups receive an internationally competitive operating environment and a multi-professional team to support them. The choice should be made increasingly between individuals and not between species, the release states.
In addition to that, the board of the Olympic Committee emphasizes the consolidation of top-level systems and the centralization of resources. Likewise, the government wants to make the development of coaching expertise a national priority.