It is the early evening of August 3rd. An Olympic reception will be organized at the Finnish embassy in Paris, attended by the sharpest management of the entire Olympic team.
The previous day has been dark, when among the team’s few athletes with medal potential, e.g. shooter Eetu Kallioinen and judoka Martti A man from Puma have lost the game.
Director of the elite sports unit of the Olympic Committee Checkmate Weak presents to the undersigned a picture he took of the empty trophy ball at the Stade de France. Heikkinen sent it nostalgically to the former head coach of the national skiing team Magnar For Dalen. He was given a simple mission at the beginning of the race in 2006: men’s skiers must be returned to medal level in prestigious competitions.
As is well remembered, this is what happened. Heikkinen was then one of the successful national ski team. Now he has a similar mission: Finland must be considered a medal country in the toughest of forums, i.e. the Summer Olympics.
At the end of the evening, the disappointed crowd watches on the big screen how the boxer Pihla Kaivo-oja falls in the quarterfinals, and again one medal seam is gone. The people who burst into the darkening evening of Paris do not yet know that no one from the Finnish team would achieve a better ranking in the Games than Kaivo-oja’s 5th place.
Serious expressions
Noon on August 11, the Games’ main media center at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. Behind the table in the auditorium sit the communications director of the Olympic Committee with a very serious expression What Noronenchairman Jan Free mountainMatti Heikkinen and vice president of the elite sports unit, manager of the Olympic team Leena Paavolainen.
In general, such serious sports leaders have been seen explaining the doping scandal of a Finnish athlete. But now we are not on the verge of an individual, but a systemic disaster: Finland’s 116-year medal streak at the Summer Olympics was bluntly broken in Paris.
What seemed possible already in 2004, 2016 and 2021, became a reality on the shores of Seine.
– For a long time, the trend was such that this really shouldn’t have surprised anyone, says an expert at the top sports institute Kihu Jari Heat.
Desires to continue at Vapaavuori
Vapaavuori unexpectedly announces that he will “very likely” apply for a further season in the Olympic Committee, and Heikkinen also states that he will only be in the groove of the halfway point of his race, which will end in the summer of 2026.
Both admit a heavy failure and promise a critical analysis of what happened in the fall. Vapaavuori, which started with a lot of noise in 2010, the Humu, i.e. elite sports, change work group was recognized as a costly failure on the closing day of the Paris Games. Many sports influencers have presented even harsher criticism towards “himmel”.
The representatives of the Olympic Committee will therefore return in time to explain what went wrong in Paris. Why doesn’t Finland have about fifteen athletes and teams of athletes who, at their basic level, are able to compete for a medal at the Summer Olympic level and for a gold medal above their basic level? That would practically mean 4–6 medals from every Games, a very good result.
– That is a core issue, says Leena Paavolainen.
– Now is a good place to stop, now is the moment to really look ahead and make the necessary changes, if and when we want to return to the medal base at the Summer Olympics, says Heikkinen.
From recent history, examples of this kind are mainly the seven prestigious medals of the air races Marko Yli-Hannuksela and Tero Pitkämäki. They were in Paris as coaches.
91 teams achieved at least one medal from Paris. From the other Nordic countries, i.e. the best comparisons, Sweden, Norway and Denmark achieved a total of 28 medals, ten of which were gold. Among the teams bigger than Finland (57 athletes), Nigeria was also left without a medal.
Top sport on the sidelines
Urheilu contacted a number of Finnish elite sports influencers and experts to evaluate how the Paris stomach crash could be avoided in the Los Angeles Summer Olympics, which are fast approaching.
This was repeated in everyone’s answers: in the current Olympic Committee, elite sports are only part of the activity, and in the opinion of many, an increasingly smaller and marginal part. Some of the top sports employees of the Olympic Committee also feel this way.
On the opening page of its website, the Olympic Committee welcomes you to the world of exercise and sports. So not in the world of elite sports.
Jan Vapaavuori admits that today the Olympic Committee, which also acts as the umbrella organization for sports, has become “more social” during his presidency.
There are also other views:
– Top sports are not between the wood and the bark in the Olympic Committee. It is between the gigantic jaws of an industrial metal press, describes a person working at the core of Finnish top sports who is worried about the future.
– The worst enemy of elite sports is a person who knows how to talk about elite sports credibly as if he understands something about it, even though he doesn’t, says the director of elite sports of the Ice Skating Association Tendon Hänninenwho at the beginning of the 2010s was able to compare the Finnish activity with the Norwegian one when acting as the head coach of the country’s speed skating sprinters.
President of the Sports Association Riga Buttock says that the big confederations must have very thorough discussions with the Olympic Committee about its gigantic role as an umbrella organization during the fall. Pakarinen sees the structure of the Olympic Committee as harmful to elite sports.
– It must be completely separated from the rest of the activity. It is so different from exercise or even so-called normal competitive sports to the core. And there are many reasons to consider whether there is much in the rest of the Olympic Committee’s activities that could be handled by sports associations and clubs.
Kononen: “Alarm mode”
Former medal walker, who also performed in Paris Aku Partanen coach Valentine Kononen applied for the position of head of the top sports unit in 2022, but Heikkinen was chosen from the two final candidates.
For a long time, Kononen refused to publicly confirm that he had applied, but now admits it to Urheilu.
– The lack of medals must be caused by a state of alarm, which, if used correctly, can also be a great opportunity. Now we should start immediately by implementing, for example, the recommendations of the evaluation report made a couple of years ago.
A quite critical independent assessment of Finland’s elite sports prospects was made by Finnish-Danish forces in 2022, in which Finland was considered more of a competitive than an elite sports country. Finland’s level is not enough to succeed in the Summer Olympics.
– Those recommendations have not been implemented at all, says Kononen.
There’s enough money
Money, i.e. the lack of it, is often seen as an obstacle to top Finnish sports success. Kononen completely disagrees.
– With the current public investments, it is entirely possible to get a significantly better result from the Summer Olympics. It’s just about being wise in spending money.
As a successful entrepreneur, Kononen knows that it’s not worth shoveling new money into a company that doesn’t work.
– Of course, nothing more can be invested in this system that brought the result in Paris. The medal level of the Olympic Games concerns about one percent of the athletes, and the most important thing is to support that one percent at the end of the process, which makes the difference. That is, one percent of one percent.
– In other words, we have to make sure that everything is as good as possible with the rather limited group of athletes-coaches. From the point of view of Olympic success, it’s not about either.
The elite sports unit distributes 6.7 million euros per year to sports and individuals, of which 4.2 million to summer sports. In total, the state distributes around 20 million euros of money per year, which has some kind of connection to elite sports. It covers, for example, academy activities and training centers and the research institute Kihun.
The state covers about 65 percent of the Olympic Committee’s budget. In the next few years, there will be at least moderate cuts to the money distributed by the state due to the state of the state finances.
About 150 million euros of sponsor money comes to Finnish elite sports per year, but the overwhelming majority of it goes to big team sports. Relative to the population, sponsor money is 2.5–3 times larger in other Nordic countries.
Will Korjus challenge?
The Olympic javelin champion who sits on the board of the Olympic Committee Tapio Korjus will very likely challenge Vapaavuori in the autumn presidential election, although he will not admit it publicly yet.
The big question for him is what is wanted. Extreme sports are an exceptional activity, for which balancing is not suitable. Korjus also says that he understands the concern related to the internal status of elite sports in the Olympic Committee. According to Urheilu’s information, Korjus has made his views on this very clear behind the scenes within the Olympic Committee.
Korjus admits that he was surprised to pay attention to one matter related to the elite sports unit.
– Exercise is an important issue, but a top sports director does not like to make fiery speeches about it. Matti (Heikkinen) is a great and smart man, but he has clearly had some kind of mapping problem with his job description. Sports matters do not belong to the top sports director. Yes, this contradiction has been noticed within sports.
Korjus says that in such a situation it is also necessary to openly consider whether all the people in the Olympic Committee are in the right positions.
Managing the top sports unit on a day-to-day basis has slipped to Paavolainen, because Heikkinen rarely visits Helsinki.
Focus on making results
Janne Hänninen reminds that the most important thing for a top athlete is to develop his sport performance and the technique, physics and equipment it requires.
– More than this, in our sport these days we mainly talk about safe spaces and such high-level ethical issues. It is quite clear that people need to know how to behave and respect others, but I would say that now that space has certainly been talked about as safe enough and the focus could be shifted to where that result is created.
In this hard core field, Hänninen appreciates the employees of the top sports unit Tommi Pärmäkoski very much.
– Tommi understands how important it is to gather hard professionals together for a peer talk. After all, elite sports are a very exceptional activity, which must be kept completely separate from the other noble goals of the Olympic Committee.
– It’s good to talk about studies and dual careers and so on, but if you want to succeed in such a tough place as the Summer Olympics, these dual careers and studies come in second and third places in life at most.
Riikka Pakarinen says that Finland would not necessarily make a mistake if it decided to invest strictly in certain investment sports and seek Olympic success this way.
– The result could be better than shooting the subsidy with a shotgun.
Has done a huge day’s work at Ahkera in Lahti and in Finnish athletics Pekka Mäki-Reinikka reminds that one of the reasons for the decline of the summer Olympic sports can be found in the beginning of the 1990s, when the umbrella organization, the Sports Association of the Kingdom of Finland SVUL, went bankrupt.
– It was a complete disaster for Finnish individual sports coach training, the consequences of which are now being seen very severely with a delay.
Decreasing age groups
Director of Communications Noronen reminds us of certain realities of individual sports at the Summer Olympics.
– With Sweden, we are exceptions in that ice hockey and floorball take a huge number of young athletes and in general 70 percent of children in Finland start sports with a team sport. At the same time, these sports still receive up to two-thirds of the sponsorship money.
– From that remaining part, the decreasing age groups, we try hard to find talents that would develop into athletes who can do well in the toughest sports competitions in the world.
On the other hand, football takes away talent and money in many other countries. But still, European countries the size of Finland won four to ten medals in Paris.
If nothing changes, the medal balance in Los Angeles 2028 and Brisbane 2032 may look the same as in Paris.