KUOPIO. 18-year-old ski jumper Vilho Palosaari is very flexible, like a rubber doll. It is revealed by a beep during the side exercises of the hill jumpers in the Kuopio hall. The recent junior world champion lands the split so easily that it’s laughable. Palosaari says that he normally stretches a couple of times a day.
– I haven’t always been flexible. I was a bit of a jerk, I was more from the stiffer end. The coaches said that you should start stretching and then I started. Yes, our other jumpers have also started to stretch more. Especially after last summer when we were shown how to stretch properly at a camp in Slovenia.
Sports director Mika Kojonkoski flexibility is one of the factors explaining Palosaari’s success.
– Special mobility is one characteristic of today’s ski jumper. For example, you have to be very mobile at the hip, like a rubber man. It has to be really elastic and fast and lightweight. Vilho has good characteristics for the sport.
Kojonkoski follows the side exercises together with the head coach Janne Väätäinen and coaching Palosaari and the rest of the youth national team Lauri Hakolan with.
– We have gathered a group here in Kuopio to train together and built a professional team around it. The goal is to make quality days repeating the basics. Mainly there are national team, B national team and youth national team jumpers here. They train here, for example Antti Aalto and Eetu Nousiainen and young people in addition to Vilho Palosaari Tomas Kuisma and Tuomas Meis. At least in my opinion, this is a really good change to coaching patterns, says Hakola.
Vilho Palosaari, who is doing sharp effort exercises in the background, at least in this milieu, doesn’t get to float with his success a few weeks ago. The benevolent acknowledgment of other jumpers between exercises takes care of that. Palosaari admits that daily training together naturally creates an atmosphere for constant small competition.
– Yes, even in hill training we have such a competitive mood that who comes from the lowest boom and the longest.
In addition to mountain jumping, Palosaari, who is studying business administration at Savo Vocational College, has been living and training in Kuopio since autumn 2021. With his World Cup debut, World Cup points and the Junior World Championship, he has already achieved the goals he set for this season last summer.
At the Planica World Championships, the purpose is to gather experience and measure one’s own skills just by enjoying, without prior pressure. The large crowd doesn’t cause additional pressure either, the already experienced Central European hill week and especially the opening race in Oberstdorf take care of that.
– There, looking down from the dressing room, I first got cold shivers, when there was an impossible amount of people. But when I went to the boom myself, I didn’t even notice the sound anymore. I just focused on what I was doing.
After winning the Junior World Championship gold, Palosaari described his fresh championship jumps as ugly. Now, a few weeks later, he is ready to soften his stance a bit. After rewatching, “they didn’t look so bad anymore”. Palosaari seems a bit shy, but watches things with a twinkle in his eye. At the same time, he exudes a certain open-mindedness and self-confidence.
– I knew after the World Cup in Zakopane in January that my jumping was going to end. I thought it would be a miracle if there was no gold in the youth games. Silver or triple status would have been a disappointment for me, if I’m honest.
Palosaari has taken a huge development leap this season. In part, it is a fortunate consequence of the sluggishness of Finnish ski jumping in recent years.
– It normally takes at least five years to get from the national level to the World Cup level. Since we’ve been a bit lacking in athletes, Vilho has been able to experiment earlier and made the leap successfully. Under normal circumstances, that leap would be too big. Because of too big a leap, you would normally be taken a little bit all the time, which is not a good thing in terms of development. At Vilho, this almost impossible leap has now succeeded, says Mika Kojonkoski.
Both Kojonkoski and Hakola emphasize the work done in the background of the young world champion in his native Kuusamo.
– On the coaching side, a good job has been done in his childhood and youth phase in his home region. A versatile physical base and the ability to train hard have been born there. He also has a relatively strong physical base for his age. It has been good to start refining it further. I have been most impressed by his commitment to our training system. He has a desire to work hard and, above all, an infinite desire to improve. I think they are the biggest issues behind this development, Hakola describes.
A few hours after the side exercise, Vilho Palosaari measures the biggest-looking piece of cake on his plate at the medal coffees held in honor of the junior world champion at the Savo Vocational College.
For example Matti Nykänen, Toni Nieminen and Janne Ahonen once also emerged as junior world champions before rising to become ski jumping stars known to the whole nation.
Before Palosaari, the most recent junior WC gold was jumped Joonas Ikonenwhich is perhaps the least known to the general public out of the eight Finnish jumpers who have achieved this feat.
At the time of Ikonen’s achievement, Vilho Palosaari was only a little over six months old. After the medal coffees, Urheilu playfully decides to test the new world champion’s knowledge of the sport’s history.
What comes to your mind about the name Joonas Ikonen?
– I don’t know him, but he is reportedly a nice guy. And sometimes he has been able to jump the hill well, Palosaari grins.
Can you tell who it is Ari-Pekka From Siilinjärvi?
– Share, Nikkola you probably mean…
This new generation athlete doesn’t seem to consider the last century a thing of the past. And also those found on the list of young world champions Janne Happonen and Brother Matti Lindström the achievements also seem to be in his possession.
– You have to know those names. I have looked up to Janne Aho since I was a child. I might still sometimes watch his old jumps from, say, hill week. And I wince was in a class of its own.