National team gymnast Rosanna Ojala compare the relationship between the coach and the trainee with the parent-child relationship.
– In both cases, it is certainly difficult to transfer part of the decision-making power to the child. However, with adult experience when you often know what is best for a young person.
In a sport where the norm is to be in the coaching of the same coach for most of his career, Ojala has chosen a change of landscape on several occasions. Sometimes the initiative has come from him himself, sometimes from outside.
During his career as a competitive gymnast for more than twenty years, he has experienced Finnish, Russian, American, Swedish and currently Hungarian coaching culture.
– The relationship between a coach and a trainee is very intense when you spend many hours together in the gym every day. It is inevitable that emotions will sometimes heat up.
In the United States, the debate over the relationship between managers and athletes has been hot in recent years. The topics have ranged from verbal attacks and mental abuse to the sexual exploitation of children and young people, perpetrated by adults with whom children and young people have been addicted.
Ojala has also heard inappropriate comments from coaches, but in her case, the most negative experiences are related to situations where the coach has left him to his own devices, mainly as a demonstration.
Today, a Tampere-born multiple Finnish champion living in Denmark has had time to see and experience the pros and cons of his beloved hobby at the age of 27, and he is not afraid to say his opinion on things he would like to change.
In Sportliv’s mini-documentary, Rosanna Ojala gives her views on, among other things, the age limit for women’s scaffolding and the fact that the Olympics are seen in Finland as the only really significant goal for top gymnasts:
In March, when Finland is still covered in snow, the spring sun is already warming up comfortably in Copenhagen.
Rosanna Ojala likes to walk in the milieu familiar to tourists in her new hometown, around the lakes and in the hustle and bustle of Nyhavn. At the moment, these are mostly short walks, as the last knee surgery is just over a month old.
Most recently, as he has suffered many injuries over the years. The first was more serious when she broke her hand in connection with the EYOF, the “mini-Olympics” in Tampere in 2009. At the time, 14-year-old Rosanna was the new Finnish champion in the junior quadruple match.
– I remember how the team coach said to me, “Rosanna, it doesn’t end there, this is where it starts.” And that’s how it was, in many ways, Ojala says more than ten years later.
Broken ligament in both knees, broken Achilles tendon, torn helix, cartilage damage, Overtraining. For a long time, it was self-evident that Ojala would return to compete after the injuries, but as the Achilles tendon ruptured at the 2017 European Championships, the 22-year-old gymnast began to seriously consider whether it was worth continuing.
Olympic dreams – for better or worse
Even as a child, a promising gymnast is told about the biggest and most important goal – to grow up to be an Olympic gymnast.
The environment sets goals that young gymnasts embrace because they have been told this is how things go. Each four-year period en route to the next Olympic qualifiers is carefully planned. For many, the pressure is getting too hard.
– If you invest everything in the Olympics, the World Cup or the European Championships and you don’t think about how you feel every day… Does it make sense? Are you well? It then gives nothing in the final games.
Ojala won her first Finnish Championship medal in the women’s class at the age of 12. Since then, there have been 23 more.
For Finnish top gymnasts, it is an achievement in itself to reach the Olympics. When Oskar Kirmes competed in Rio in 2016, he was the first Finnish male gymnast at the Olympics in 44 years. On the women’s side Annika Urvikko competed in London in 2012, and since then no one has managed to get involved.
Rosanna Ojala is one of those who has tried. Before the London Olympics, he finally competed for a place in Urvico.
– That was the first time I put a lot of pressure and stress on my own shoulders that I would have to reach the Olympic venue. It left a kind of pipe look and obsession that was also put on the outside for me that the Olympics is the thing, the biggest achievement.
Due to injuries, admission to the Rio Olympics was never realistic, but before Tokyo, Ojala got a second chance.
– At the World Championships in 2019, it happened almost the same as before 2012. Now that I look back, I understand why I didn’t do my best there at the Games. I had lost perspective and balance and on top of that was the same look at the pipe.
Since then, Ojala has done her best to change her perspective. Today, she decides on her own daily life and training patterns, and hopes for success to come as a by-product of it.
“Oh, are you cooling off?”
Rosanna Ojala still does not rule out the possibility that a new Olympic project is yet to come. When asked if he is still aiming for the Olympics and he has replied that he is now primarily investing in success at the European Championships and World Championships, he has been told, “Oh, are you cooling off?”.
– The answer has both aroused and annoyed me. It feels like you haven’t achieved anything at all if you haven’t been to the Olympics. However, there are many more top gymnasts involved in the World Cup.
In recent years, the level of Finnish women’s gymnastics has clearly increased. That’s why Rosanna is particularly pleased with last year’s quadruple Championship silver, which she really had to fight for.
– I love to compete in tough company – instead of winning Finnish Championship gold just because others were inferior.
According to Ojala, Finnish women now have a rare opportunity to win a place in the World Cup team competition through their European Championship success. Instead, women are hardly a realistic team to aim for a place at the 2024 Paris Olympics. If a Finnish female gymnast enters the Olympics, she will compete as an individual.
Targeted training from the age of six
Rosanna Ojala had time to test both figure skating and athletics before she entered the gymnastics competition group at the age of six.
– I still remember that moment. The other girls came in the right gymnastics suits and knew how to make cart wheels on a boom. I myself came in a t-shirt and shorts and didn’t know anything like that.
Rosanna was convinced she didn’t have a chance to join the group, but she did. It was a revolutionary factor in his life, as he himself puts it.
Over the years, Ojala, who has spent more than twenty years in competitive gymnastics, has learned to enjoy the sport more and more holistically. That’s why she wants to inspire other female gymnasts to continue her racing career longer.
At the same time, she speaks in favor of raising the age limit for women.
– If there is an injury, or you can’t stand the total stress or you don’t get to your best at the age of 16, 17 or 18, you may start to feel like this is here, I shouldn’t try again. Raising the age limit to 18 could reduce stress at 16.
According to Ojala, coaches may have an incomplete understanding of the overall workload of a gymnast at a critical age when much is happening at the same time in life.
Because gymnasts practice so much at a very young age, puberty is often delayed. Therefore, major changes in the body often coincide with the worst school stress just during the transition between high school and high school.
– A coach who only stares at workout hours may say “you can’t be tired” when he should instead ask how he sleeps at night and whether the school weighs in.
“As a kid, you just go and do, a bit like a robot”
Ojala himself found high school time very challenging. There was school and homework and three to four hours of training a day. Although his parents always rushed him to workouts and home, the overall workload was very high. High school made it easier when he completed it in four years and was allowed to count practice hours as school courses.
Although Ojala is in favor of raising the age limit, she is still not sure that the situation will change significantly.
– As long as there is an idea of the optimal age at which a gymnast should learn certain things, maybe everything will continue as before.
He still wants to stress that scaffolding at the top level is not a sport for children.
– It is so mentally demanding how the interaction of body and psyche works. As a kid, you just go and do, a bit like a robot. Whatever happens, just keep going. At this age, the yield of the species is at least much higher for me than it was when I was younger.
And although the level of difficulty in Ojala’s competition series has long been the same, he has developed in other areas.
– One of my strengths today is that I have been able to refine, for example, the empathy and artistry required on the main floor, which I did not have at all as a child and young person.
The dark side of the gymnastics world
The most shocking thing is how the U.S. Federation closed the eyes of a national team doctor for years. Larry Nassarin sexual exploitation of young gymnasts. Among his more than 250 victims are several Olympic medalists, including the most successful gymnast of all time Simone Biles.
In a much-publicized trial, Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.
Other high-profile cases concern coaches who have exposed their trainees to mental and physical violence. The most recent case concerns Russian-born Valeri Liukini, who, among other things, coached his daughter Nastia in the four-match gold and four dimmer medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The Finnish Championships in Scaffolding will be competed in Tampere from 8 to 9. June.