The great Olympic streak of Finnish badminton players will also continue at the Paris Games. Head coach Ville Lång has made it clear that things are really not okay in the background, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen sports reporter
From the end of last week, it was monitored whether the Finnish wrestlers will reach representative places for the Paris Olympic Games in the qualifying tournament. After all, it is about the age-old sport of 83 Olympic medals and 29 gold medals, in which Finland has always participated when participating in the Summer Olympics. So too in Paris.
Less attention has been paid to the fact that Finland has practically secured Olympic representation in another rock-hard sport. This week, the bronze medalist from three years ago is playing in the European Badminton Championships in Saarbrücken Kalle Koljonen can join again. It means that Finland has always been represented by at least one player during the sport’s 32-year Olympic run.
Pesti will be discontinued
Another two-time Olympic representative, an ex-top player, ends in Paris Ville Långin career as head coach of the Badminton Association. The choice is not Lång’s, because he could not even apply for the next season. The union abolishes the head coach’s job and will choose soon himself a head coach. Judging by the fact that the application notice has been published on the association’s website only in Finnish, the search is primarily for a Finnish developer of the coaching path and top badminton.
Lång is among the top applicants, and the executive director Ann-Marie Lairolahti and the chairman of the board Tytti Saarinen have interviewed him.
There are also enough opinions in the Finnish badminton family that Lång should find his next professional challenges outside the sports association. Let’s see how the country’s most internationally successful of all time, also known from reality TV productions The ex-player commented on the start of 2021 in the association’s selection bulletin:
– I am very pleased and happy with the trust that my selection as head coach shows. We are in a historically wonderful situation, where in July Finland will have a representative once again in the Olympic arena (in Tokyo) and at the same time there is also a lot of potential growing in the younger players. With hard and goal-oriented work, we have a path open no matter how far.
Fierce interview
The 8th of last November came, and for the kind people, not a road was opened, but a mountain. Lång read In Helsingin Sanomat, the numbers of worms in their own field for Finnish sports culture are absolutely freezing, even in a historically fierce interview. It seemed downright absurd that a person spoke in the story, who at the same time raises a salary from the main target of his criticism.
The badminton community knew very well in 2021 that the number one enemy of lukewarm consultant speech and mediocrity was hired as the head coach. In the interview, Lång only lived up to his personality and reputation, but part of the species family took it very badly – even though it was primarily about caring, a cry for help.
Finland has and always has had enough fundamentally talented and skilled players. However, in a sport with an extreme classification for physique and health like badminton, talent is not even the beginning, at most the beginning of the beginning, when the matter is evaluated from the aspect of international top success.
If the absolutely hard training doesn’t start well before high school age, international goals are no longer warm talk. This is the message Lång has desperately – and to see success – tried to get across.
Respectable resilience
Even though the cold data is on the head coach’s side, the Badminton Association would show quite respectable resilience if Ville Lång’s application comes out of the pile at the end of the application process.
Lång is by no means the only Finnish national coach who has found himself on a moped on the highway, without real opportunities for structural changes that might lead to success.
However, he is not content to spin quietly in his comfort zone, but is an elephant in a china shop.
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.