The historic loss of zero medals at the Paris Olympics was the last straw.
Six famous Finnish sports influencers – working life professor Sami Itanidocent Kati Lehtonencoach Valentin Kononenex-sports director Jarmo Mäkeläcoach Anu Nieminen and a professor Karl-Erik Michelsen – noticed that he thought about the urgent need for change in the same way.
At the beginning of September, the group started working on the program of measures. This week it was submitted to the Ministry of Education and Culture, where it has already been reviewed by the Minister of Sports Sandra Bergqvist (r) that the civil service management of the Ministry of Sports. It’s not about custom work.
A two-page summary of the extensive, even radical program of measures was delivered to the media on Wednesday, which Sami Itani, who was one of the authors and initiators, commented to Urheilu. The complete measure proposal had not yet been entered into the Ministry of Education’s system as a public document on Wednesday.
– We do not believe that Finnish top sports or Olympic success will take off with the current structure and operating culture of the Olympic Committee. This is by no means an attack on people, but no data supports the idea, the former chairman of the Sports Association stated.
– On the contrary, our comparison countries, for example Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Holland, are running further and further away, and we are even starting to be on the verge of such a threat that Finland will be left without a medal even at the Winter Games. That’s realism.
“The filings are not enough”
Badminton coach Anu Nieminen, a four-time Olympic representative, coldly compares Finland to Denmark, where he had an impact as an athlete and coach for two decades.
– Above all, I miss Denmark’s top sports culture, the absolutely tough level of demands that is visible in all activities.
– At the moment, we don’t even give our young athletes the chance to advance to the top of the world, let alone succeed there. It has become quite clear that small tweaks are not enough, the changes must be radical.
The group’s media release mentions management problems, conflicting interests and power games, a drop in the level of requirements and insufficient feedback as obstacles to Finnish top-level sports success. According to the group, this stems from at least the dishonesty and inability of sports actors to acknowledge the facts.
Sami Itani reminds that the comparison countries mentioned above have one thing in common: the autonomy of elite sports, which shows, of course, among many other factors, also correlated for a very good international success:
– While elsewhere the upper level seeks the justification of its existence from the lower level, we have an image in which the lower level seeks its justification from the upper level, even though the “owners” of the Olympic Committee are the unions, whose owners are the clubs, i.e. we, the moving people.
Goodbye, elite sports unit?
The most concrete change proposal is drastic: the group sees that the Olympic Committee started in 2013 top sports unit has been allowed to give evidence and its time is over.
The unit is currently understaffed and has broken wings, when both the leader Matti Heikkinen that vice president Leena Paavolainen the work ended this fall.
– The results speak for themselves. Sports are therefore an honest area of life, says Anu Nieminen.
The operating model of the Olympic Committee’s elite sports unit is not the best solution for achieving international excellence in the future. Overall management needs broader shoulders than the current union-based management model.
We propose that the overall management and operating model of elite sports be radically changed. In the new model, the Ministry of Education and Culture will be supported by a new top sports expert body.
Its task is to direct the public funding of elite sports to training according to the global level of results and requirements.
In fact, at the time of the creation of the elite sports unit, there was also a discussion about an option where the unit would have been established directly under the ministry, but this solution was not reached. This is the basic system in several reference countries.
Sami Itani knows that in the slow-moving sports bureaucracy it is not a matter of shouting through the air, so the proposal calls for a political decision as soon as possible to guide a significant organizational reform.
Transparency as a priority
According to the proposal, money would be distributed in the future with completely transparent criteria and bases. The ministry’s experts are declared to be downright saints:
No administrative, financial or party-political ties to funding targets, no parliamentary election. Expertise must be wide-ranging, taking into account international competence.
The solution cuts off interests related to memberships and different beneficiary roles. Actors involved in elite sports are required to be both honest and to change their own values and attitudes.
The change can be successful if the interests of elite sports and athletes can be prioritized over one’s own or one’s own organization’s interests.
Sami Itani admits that Finland is a small country and the list of requirements, strictly interpreted, excludes a huge number of potential candidates from the expert group:
– In this model, the Olympic Committee would no longer have anything to do with the sharpest top of Finnish elite sports, except that it would of course continue to manage Olympic projects, such as registering athletes for the games and overseeing the interests of the Olympic movement in Finland.
– We no longer believe in the ability of the current Olympic Committee to change direction. Unfortunately, the situation of the Olympic Committee is also told by the fact that there is only one person who has signed up for the position of chairman a good month before the election.
Zero euros
Finland’s current elite sports structure is based on 2010–12 to the meeting To the change working group for elite sports, after the final report, the public funding of elite sports significantly increased while the success ended.
According to forecasts, funding will also decrease in the next few years. While the change work cost around 2.5 million euros, the recent report and proposed measure by six people were more affordable.
– It cost zero euros. And not a single member of the group is basically aiming for any position of operational management or trust management in Finnish top sports, Itani says.