The Biathlon World Cup ends on Sunday. Live broadcast of the women’s joint departure at 15:10 and the men’s joint departure at 17:25. Finns were not allowed to participate in the joint race.
The top performances of the Finnish national biathlon team fell short in the main event of the season at the World Championships. The best results were the eighth place of the Finnish relay team and Suvi Minkkinen 23rd place on the normal distance.
Minkkinen’s skiing speed was slow after the earlier illnesses of the season.
He was satisfied with the World Cup as far as his starting points were concerned. Already a year ago, there was a lot of talk about how skiing speed is not enough.
Now Minkkinen says that he is thinking of making more changes for next season to improve his skiing speed.
– If I could get the budget together, I could spend a large part of the training season in Central Europe and next to the hills, 29-year-old Minkkinen thought in an interview with Urheilu.
Minkkinen has noticed that durability matters even more in the era of fluoride-free creams.
– We don’t have the kind of cottages in Finland that are available in Central Europe. I would like to try something really different and see if I can take a big step there, Minkkinen describes.
The step doesn’t just come at the national team’s camp days.
– It is certainly a fact that the national team will not be able to stay high for as long as I have thought. Let’s hope that I could be with the national team at least for the high-ranking camps. It remains to be seen how much I will be with the national team at home, Minkkinen reflects.
Konkari uploaded direct words about his difficulties
Tero Seppälä28, stayed away from the national team for the summer training season, when the Norwegian head coach Erik Bartlett Kulstad demanded 100% attendance in national team activities from all selected. Seppää wanted to train with commitment as his own personal trainer Anatoly Hovantsev with.
The World Championship venue, Nove Mesto, is located 600 meters above sea level, so the national team did not camp at altitude until the start of the season. It also didn’t serve Seppä¤ä, so he didn’t join the national team until the competition season.
However, Seppää has had a difficult season. In the fall, he fell on a roller skiing run and hurt his side. In January, the coronavirus struck. Seppälä missed the last two World Cup weekends before the World Cup.
He hasn’t thought about the upcoming season yet, but said that he was focused on succeeding in the World Championships.
– There are still three weeks left of the World Cup. It is still a fact that I will make some changes. The results are not pleasing. Let’s see what that package consists of, Seppälä formulated.
One of the heroes of the Finnish team Olli Hiidensalo, 33, previously wondered if his international competitive season would end at the World Championships. Hiidensalo confirmed to Urheilu that the World Cup will be held here. He plans to compete in the championships in six weeks. The career will continue next season as well.
– The camping budget was dropped quite a lot for this season. The quality suffered, as did the camps abroad. Now the high-altitude camps will probably come back when the World Championships are high again (in Lenzerheide, Switzerland). However, it should not always be the case that there is no high-altitude camping if the World Cup is not high, says Hiidensalo.
Hiidensalo also reminds that many of the team got sick during the season and that’s why it became broken. That’s why, in his opinion, everything can’t be blamed on less camping.
– Last season we had four men in the top twelve. There has been one now. I myself was once out of the World Cup points. Now I have maybe reached the points a couple of times. It has been a really bad season for me as well as others. There are only a few flashes of light from individual athletes, Hiidensalo put the statistics on the counter.
The head coach needs the athletes to work
Head coach Kulstad sees that the results are always the result of the work done.
– If we had done a better job, we would have had a better start to the Games, Kulstad said.
Kulstad was satisfied with how the Finnish Games were still on the rise, for example in the men’s relay.
– It was a good result, but it could have been a great result too. We need to put a little more pressure on the girls. We have to do the right things. If we don’t do them, we don’t do anything, Kulstad described.
Perhaps the most startling comments after the last Finnish day of the World Cup were answered by Noora Kaisa Keränen. Keränen, 22, who has won medals in youth competitions in recent years, said directly that someone needs to teach him how to ski better.
– We are working on it. If you do wrong things, you can hope you are good, but you are not good. There are things that need to be done. You can improve in the middle of the season, but it won’t be steady yet. However, I believe that he will take a step forward after one good training summer, Kulstad described.
For the Norwegian coach, the biggest disappointment of the season has been the opening weekend of the World Cup in Östersund at the end of November.
– I thought we had taken steps forward. In Östersund it was seen that we had not taken. In the next training season, the athletes will probably understand more, but they have to do work in the summer. If they don’t do the work, the situation is the same again. We do work in winter, but the work really starts at the beginning of May. He is either involved, wants to do work and changes, or there are ten new athletes ahead of him again.
A Norwegian coach with a strong commitment
Kulstad acknowledges the challenge in terms of resources against bigger countries, but according to him, even more could be taken out of the current situation.
– We can do better even now. It starts when everyone is committed and takes responsibility for their work. If everyone does that, we will see a change, Kulstad estimates.
Kulstad wants to emphasize that you don’t get anywhere by following several different paths.
– We must have a clear idea and one direction where we are going. If you don’t want to follow it, then I’ll take a different line. It can’t be that we take half of that and half of this. It doesn’t bring any results, Kulstad describes.
Kulstad still strongly swears by group training.
– If you are not part of the team, I don’t understand what you are trying to achieve. (Exercising in a group) you get competitions, discussion and camaraderie. Of course, you make sacrifices when you want to do something a little differently. Those small differences still don’t make a good or bad athlete, Kulstad says.
He emphasizes that you have to learn to compete and work as a team.
– Throughout my career, I have seen that people who work in a team develop. Those who think they are better than others are regressing.
Kulstad hopes that Seppäälä will be with the national team next training season. He understood the previous solution, as he considered himself a fairly unknown Norwegian when he became the head coach.
– I believe that Tero will only benefit from being in the national team. We have so many athletes who are on the same level as him. I believe that Tero will benefit from the additional competition and additional knowledge of what it means to be in the national team.
Former head coach of the Finnish national team Jonne Kähkönen currently works in Italian women’s coaching. He has seen a clear difference in the actions of the country that took three medals at these World Championships compared to Finland.
All athletes in Italy follow the same program for men, women and youth. After defining the program, we discuss how to align coaching separately for different groups.
– The entire national team’s philosophy goes from top to bottom, Kähkönen says about the clear difference between Finland and Italy.
Seppälä’s source group was confused
Seppäälä felt disappointed about the World Cup. He resented fines at shooting locations, especially when the conditions for shooting were good.
– Due to the starting group issues, the conditions (for skiing) were not very balanced. Making the results was not easy, says Seppälä.
Seppälä only started in the fourth starting group on Wednesday’s normal trip. Problems arose when the salting of the ski track failed a little. Seppä¤lä, who started the race among the last, had to suffer because of it and was 36th in the final results.
According to Seppälä, the background of the weaker starting position was the two missed World Cup weekends.
– That’s how it is, and I haven’t thought about it anyway. I haven’t talked about it with the head coach. I am focused on getting the best possible performance, Seppälä described.
Head coach Kulstad explains the matter with Seppälä’s results. According to Kulstad, Seppää was Finland’s fourth best athlete this season in the normal distance before the World Championships.
– Tero doesn’t shoot better, he doesn’t ski that much better. I’ll put him where he belongs with his results. If he had had better results from earlier in the season, he would have been better placed, Kulstad described.