Tero Seppälä withdrawing from the A national team to train had to be a suitable solution for all parties. The events of the World Cup suggested something completely different, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen Sports journalist
In the summer of 2013, the sports department of the Norwegian broadcasting company NRK visited Obertilliach, Austria. A mysterious biathlon emperor who made the place his training center Be Einar Björndalen rarely allowed the media to follow his everyday routine, so when the invitation came, it was followed.
Björndalen, who was already 39 years old at the time, demonstrated on roller skis the small things of shooting range operations, which he was able to use when arriving or leaving the bench for a couple of seconds to compensate for the fading of his superior skiing speed. It was clear from NRK’s story that now an athlete is speaking, for whom compromise is a completely foreign concept.
At the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games, Björndalen, who just turned 40, won the sprint by 1.3 seconds.
Apprentice to China
After his active career, Björndalen became the head coach of China in 2019. For the journey to the east, Björndalen took a young and enthusiastic trainer as his apprentice, By Erik Bartlett Kulstadwhose sales pitches at the World Cup in Oslo in the spring of 2022 convinced the president of the Finnish Biathlon Union Kalle Lähdesmäki. When the World Cup tour returned to Oslo last week, more than sales pitches are expected from Kulstad, who starts his third season as Finland’s head coach in the spring.
The Norwegian’s personality has remained a stranger, but after the recently concluded World Championships in Nove Mesto, it is known that Kulstad is just as open to compromises as his role model Björndalen.
Tikunnokka became the head coach in the Czech Republic and the best male athlete in Finland in recent years Tero Seppälän ratio. When Seppälä announced last spring that he was withdrawing from the A national team for the entire training season to train his coach Anatoly Hovantsev with, the parties let it be understood that everything happened by mutual agreement.
Kulstad announced that he will not give the members of the A national team different exemptions in camps and home training. Seppälä replied that he cannot commit to the will of the head coach.
Behind the scenes of Linnarauha
The scenes of Linnarauha collapsed in Nove Mesto at the latest, when the head coach divided his athletes into starting groups for the 20 kilometer normal distance. Seppälä got the highest i.e. the weakest starting number of the Finns, 89, but he still got the best result of the Finns on the ground, dirty packed snow surface. The kind man made it clear that a lower start number and a harder ski platform would have been fine.
Seppälä has announced that he will keep the bigger noises inside until the end of the season. From the point of view of the media, it’s a boring, but also understandable solution.
A similar receipt came from the athlete to the counter in Oslo, where Seppälä competed in different spheres than other Finns. All honor, of course, to the third place of the mother and grandmother of all full-time events, the mixed doubles relay.
However, Seppälä’s season has been a failure, and a young one Otto Invenius earned the head coach’s number one horse’s licks. But when you look at who else and on which screens Kulstad moved ahead of Seppälä, who ranked in the top ten in the World Cup hierarchy in the 2022 Olympic Games and the 2023 World Cup, you can’t help but wonder.
Clear typing
After all, this is all about a clear glimpse and showing the place in the locker, and Kulstad used his opportunity as soon as the protection of the perennial number one man opened up.
He didn’t practice on his own Iivo Niskasenka season has not been a parade, but could anyone imagine that the head coach Teemu Pasanen would you openly and publicly poke your three-time Olympic champion like this? Or Kulstad’s predecessors also often made their own decisions Kaisa from Mäkäräi?
There is that small difference on the CV side.
It is nothing new that the head coach calls for the best forces from spring to spring and commits them to a common plan. This is how to operate successfully and authoritarianly, for example Magnar Dale.
Seppälä expressed in Nove Mesto that there will be changes. It will be interesting to see in the spring if the “change” means a return to Kulstad’s A national team after all.