If the pre-favorite Lauri Markkase becomes the Athlete of the Year, he would have already been chosen from 18 sports. The amazing thing is that none of the sports is ice hockey, writes Pekka Holopainen
Pekka Holopainen sports reporter
shows the Sports Gala live. The broadcast of the gala starts on TV2, Areena and the app at 20:00. The opening night of the gala will be watched on Areena and the app from 18:00.
With its sports galas, Norway took a bit of a stealth start compared to Finland and awarded its most beautiful and bravest as an epiphany. You can’t apply for a joint Finnish event, the Sports Gala on the 11th of this month, from the general level of the completed sports year, but one unites.
Manchester City mega star Erling Braut Haaland dodged his shower of prizes honoring the event with a video interview from England only. The schedule of Finland’s only athlete belonging to the corresponding category looks like this around the gala: Wednesday, January 10, Utah Jazz–Denver Nuggets and Friday, January 12, Utah Jazz–Toronto Raptors.
That is, not one of the early favorites for the Athlete of the Year selection Lauri Markkas too get to the ice rink in Helsinki like a video recording where a polite family man thanks for the recognition.
Only the second largest species
If, and maybe even when, Markkanes becomes Sportsman of the Year, the choice will be both fully deserved and interesting. During the 77-year-old tradition, he would already be the 18th representative of the sport, the Fifth team athlete and the first among them, who does not work in the world’s largest but “only” the second largest team sport.
However, neither of these sports or their representative teams is the most nationally significant in Finland. For example, victorious in hockey The World Cup final reached the other year, 3.14 million TV viewers, but the choice of sports journalists has never focused on a hockey player.
Mikko Rantanen, Alexander Barkov or Roope Hintz represent the elite of the elite in Finnish top sports, but the standard set by Markkanen, i.e. the mega-stardom of the mega-sport mega-league, is now too harsh.
For the sake of transparency, I am recording my own voting results here: Markkanen, Lukas Hradecky, Wilma MurtoRantanen, Martti Puumalainen, Kalle Rovanperä, Kerttu NiskanenBarkov, Eetu Kallioinen and Sami Välimäki. Out of the top three, Murto takes silver in the final results.
No less than 16 times
Perhaps the history of the second vote, the Team of the Year category, tells something about the Finnish way of approaching hockey as a non-star cult. This choice has hit the hockey team no less than 16 times. Not now. The Davis Cup of tennis is far from what it used to be, but a colleague who thinks that the Finnish team in the semi-finals of the classic tournament would not be the Team of the Year can indulge in such acrobatics of argumentation.
The national football, ice hockey, basketball and volleyball national team selections for 2023 are well documented.
The most interesting of the Sports Journalists’ Union’s choices – Athlete of the Year, Team of the Year, Coach of the Year and Young Athlete of the Year – is the last one.
A foreigner, who made a splash in Finland, has been chosen three times and on the subject: Swedish Curt Lindstrom 1995, Italian Mauro Berruto 2007 and Norwegian Magnar Dale 2009.
The Finnish coach who optimized the performance of foreign athletes has also been selected three times: Henrik Dettmann As Germany’s head basketball coach in 2002, sami Hyypiä As manager of Bayer Leverkusen in 2012 and Petteri Piironen As a coach of the Kenyan and Egyptian javelin throwers who took a double victory at the 2015 World Championships.
Gordon Herbert has been a Finnish citizen for almost 35 years. He only travels with a Finnish passport, his only home is in Uussakaupunki, a summer cottage next to it.
He speaks Finnish, unlike, say, a few gamblers who made it to the Finnish national basketball team. In September, Herbert coached Germany to gold at the World Cup. The achievement is in vain in the history of Finnish coaching in team sports.
In the rules of the association, dual citizenship Finland-Canada and the fact that the fruits of Herbert’s work were popped by foreign athletes became a factor of difficulty. It was fixable, and thank God it was fixed.
After all, a human stepped onto the surface of the Moon already 54.5 years ago.
Pekka Holopainen
The author is a columnist based in Pori and the only sports reporter who has been selected as Journalist of the Year in Finland.