STT’s doping case became a human and legal tragedy, but its effects were far-reaching. Another outcome could have prevented the Lahti 2001 disaster, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen sports reporter
Thrown to the wolves at thirty Johanna Aatsalo the recent journalist’s biography Revealed (WSOY) is a chilling description of many things, but above all of what kind of self-ruled state within a state a sports organization detached from reality was able to swell in 1990s sports Finland.
The inspiration for the book, the STT article published during the Nagano Olympic Games in 1998, was about a skier Jari Räsänen alleged deals made knowingly by several Hihitoliitto influencers about growth hormone, which is banned in sports.
As it turned out, for a story of this scale, the text could not withstand legal sea water in terms of its evidence. The story process led by the editor-in-chief left much to be desired, which Aatsalo honestly admits in the book. In journalism, it is not always enough to be right about the so-called big picture – as Aatsalo was in later light. An appalling amount of psychological pressure and human suffering can fit between the original article and the subsequent recantation.
Misinterpretation
In 1998, the reaction of the Ski Association, the request for an investigation with claims for damages, was unfortunately interpreted as a fair attempt by the offended traditional organization to defend its reputation and honor. One of the greatest merits of the Aatsalo story is that now this kind of outrage, even one led by a top politician, would be read in a different light: as an acknowledgment of the cover-up of a structural doping problem.
If a Finnish journalist were to write a story according to which a national team skier was suspected of violating the rules of the sport in terms of doping clauses, could anyone imagine that the current management of the organization would react in the same way as the board of the ex-prime minister and future presidential candidate Esko Ahon (Central) led in 1998? Never. Fortunately, those days are over.
A few blind people can always fit in, but the big picture mentioned above, for example, regarding blood manipulation and growth hormone, both of which were beyond the reach of doping testing at the time, must have been able to be concluded to some extent by the association’s executive board, if even one eye has remained open.
Castle peace was not born
The hard work of the top national team, also in medicine and pharmacology, was clear to the honorary chairman who had already passed away For Paavo M. Petäjä, for a lawyer who has known all the ins and outs of his field since the 1950s. Petäjä suggested to the heated group some kind of castle peace with STT, in order to avoid possible dirty laundry later. He was left screaming in the wilderness. It might have been worth listening.
The dominant position of the skiing association and sport in society at the time, which is distorted from today’s perspective, is also illustrated by the actions of the police and the prosecutor’s office that handled the preliminary investigation at the time. Normally slow processes get lightning speed Johannes Hösflot Kläbonk too to look like a snail on the tracks, it was as if we were in the same boat.
The Ski Federation brought STT to its knees in the lawsuits, when there were only a couple of years until the World Championships in Lahti, loaded with huge expectations. The blunt seeding of one of the country’s most respected media institutions hardly reduced the hubris in which the national team was operating towards the home games – after all, the system had just given it the freedom to act like a state within a state. Everyone remembers how it turned out.
It is very interesting to think whether Lahti’s mass cart would have ever been seen, if the judiciary had made a positive decision in terms of STT in 1998 and placed a speed camera along the blue and white track.
Today, even the most populist politician understands that agreeing to the trust management of certain forms of sports as a “social lever” can bring more than VIP treatment and positive media.
Indirectly, Aatsalonki should be credited with the fact that people apply for these positions today with more correct motives than a quarter of a century 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.