On Friday, Silja Kosonen will compete in the EC team competitions in athletics in Poland. will show the EC team competitions on its channels from June 23 to June 25. Shipping information can be found here.
Iron nails, car tires, empty paint cans, electrical wires, cardboard boxes are lying on the floor. There is a shocking amount of stuff, and you don’t even recognize everything. Maybe some part of the compressor? It weighs at least so much that it cannot be lifted by human power. The huge yellow box full of various levers and buttons is definitely some kind of machine, but it’s hard to judge what it was used for. Hardly anything for many years.
A two-meter pile of fiberglass wool has been piled in the corner. In another corner there are empty barrels, pallets, plastic and a few rusted bicycles. Everything is covered in heavy dust. The air is humid, and the smell reminds me of a potato cellar.
– It’s like ten degrees over here, Silja Kosonen says.
It is colder in winter, when the temperature drops to eight degrees. On the plus side, though.
Not for the faint of heart
We are visiting the old sewage treatment plant, which is currently the practice facility of clay thrower Silja Kosonen.
The place is underground, and the cell phone doesn’t work. It brings training peace, but increases caution.
– I am quite accident-prone. I have to be more careful when I train here alone, Kosonen laughs.
The place is not for the faint of heart anyway. There are few lamps and the rooms are dark. From somewhere comes the soft sound of dripping water. The sounds of gunshots sometimes echo from the shooting range next door, and exhaust fumes waft from the motocross track on the other side of the heavy iron doors. Sometimes it becomes so much that Kosos begins to weaken.
– But nothing worse than that, Kosonen clarifies.
However, Kosonen admits that he is “a bit paranoid” and that he is startled by strange sounds. He is also afraid of the dark. Then the only thing that helps is to turn up the music and focus on training.
Alone
Kosonen talks a lot about his own peace. There’s enough of it here underground and it’s suitable for the people from Raisi. He describes himself as a really shy person who hardly dares to talk to strangers.
– During the Olympic Games in Tokyo, I even dared to talk in a souvenir shop To Brooke AndersenKosonen adds proudly.
Andersen is the American shot put world champion.
Kosose also has a handsome merit list. He holds the junior world record (73.43 m) and is the junior world and European champion. He was fifth in the Adult European Championships in Munich, seventh in the World Championships in Eugene. Nevertheless, she feels that Andersen and the other top women in the world are from a different planet.
– I don’t feel like I belong to that group. Maybe it will come with time, the 20-year-old pitcher thinks.
This season, Kosonen has thrown his record 73.78 and raised his basic level again. There have been strong results from one competition to another.
Kosonen recently participated in a media event together Raitanen’s top and Wilma Murron with. That was a tight spot too.
– I told Jan (coach) that what am I doing there with these European champions. Jani had to remind me that I have pretty good sea urchins too.
Kosonen aims for more of them in the summer. He will be able to take part in the prestigious youth competition one more time, when Espoo competes for the European youth championships in mid-July.
– I guess I can’t go there with any other goal than to win, Kosonen sums up.
A dream with a white-collar job
Kosonen’s father, who has worked in the city of Raisio for more than ten years, heard about the vacant wastewater treatment plant from a colleague. The idea was born to turn the place into a training facility, where you can throw moukari and take care of punt training.
The frames have been built with talko forces for a few years. Everything is made by myself, right down to the moukari cage. Coach Pihkanen has welded together various gym equipment, torn sheet after sheet of fiberglass wool from the walls, painted several meter high walls and acquired equipment needed for gym training from here and there. First, all the scrap had to be carried away from the road.
– Jani and I carried all this together, Kosonen points to a pile of scrap, which contains the most amazing waste by the ton trade.
– It took two days.
The effort paid off, because now the two have a place to practice whenever they want.
– Even during the corona period, this place could not be closed in any way, Kosonen jokes.
He trains here at least four to five times a week, sometimes more. In the middle of all the debris and dust, alone underground, Kosonen is satisfied.
– This is a dream place, he smiles.
But when the practice is over and it’s time to turn off the lights, Kosose starts to feel uncomfortable again. The lamp crackles annoyingly before it goes out and it gets dark.
– This is pretty creepy.
Then it’s time to get down to earth.
The women’s shot put is scheduled for the EC team championships on Friday at 17:20 Finnish time. The live broadcast on TV2 and Areena starts at 17:10.