Finnish athletics had a great day with two medals and two points on Friday. Urheilu’s expert Jaakko Ojaniemi breaks down the evening’s four finals.
Urheilu’s expert Jaakko Ojaniemi’s three picks from the European Athletics Championships. Ojaniemi’s extracts can be read every morning on ‘s website and in the app.
Everything is in place in Topi Raitanen’s run
More than a month ago, at the World Championships in Oregon, I had stomach pain Top Raitanen was badly disappointed when he missed the preliminaries of the 3,000-meter steeplechase. On Friday, Raitanen dominated the race from start to finish and is now celebrating the European championship of the trip
– The performances in Eugene and Munich are real extremes. I believe that Topi has been aware of his condition and situation all along. There was something about the World Cup that was out of his hands. He could more easily forget it than if everything had gone well and then he had failed, Urheilu’s expert Jaakko Ojaniemi said.
In Ojaniemi’s opinion, Raitanen’s feeling could also have been made easier by the fact that he has known that the most important competition of all is ahead in a month after the World Championships.
– It hasn’t been too long to worry about, and from the Kaleva Games he got confirmation that he is in good shape.
In Ojaniemi’s opinion, Raitanen found the tactics of the final just right for him.
– In Topi’s run, everything was on point, energy and tactics. In his run, everything was controlled and he did smart things in it. He took the lead right away and controlled the pace. He pulled at such a suitable pace that no one started to falter.
In Ojaniemi’s opinion, Topi Raitanen’s gold race had a lot in common with the steeplechase Jukka Keskisalon in the 2006 European Championship gold rush. Both showed a tactical eye in their final runs.
– When we started making final decisions before the last round, it was clear that Top had some strength left. It was a bit of a repeat of Jukka Keskisalo’s run.
Mäkelä was mentally ready
It was the Munich triple jump final To Kristiina Mäkelä already the 14th final in the adult competition career, but success has eluded him. On Friday, it finally fell through and he got EC silver with a new Finnish record of 14.64.
– This was a well-deserved medal for Kristiina. He has always been an incredibly steady jumper and has consistently jumped lethally at 14.20–14.30. Now he got that spike in just the right place and got over that basic pile. It has been expected, Jaakko Ojaniemi stated.
Ojaniemi reminds that Mäkelä has jumped better this summer than in previous years and improved his record even before the European Championships. A change in technique that Mäkelä and his coach Tuomas Sallinen have been trying to jump, has finally started to bite.
Mäkelä already announced before the World Championships that he was aiming for a medal and repeated his goal at the European Championships as well. According to Ojaniemi, Mäkelä has exuded a clear will.
– He has been confident and relaxed. He was now mentally prepared to take the medal when it was offered. It may be that it has just required maturing long enough, but the previous finals have certainly been an asset for him, Ojaniemi said.
– Kristiina’s situation is now the same as Wilma Murrolla. When you get such a gigantic success at a completely new level, it can spawn more medals in the future.
Lehikoinen’s chipping and Salminen’s technical error ate up the result
Finland also got two points on Friday’s super day, when Viivi Lehikoinen was sixth in the 400m hurdles final and Senni Salminen seventh in the triple jump final.
Lehikoinen got directly to the semi-finals and ran a new Finnish record of 54.50 at the time. In the final, the 22-year-old Lehikoinen’s final time was 55.58.
– Viiv’s first fence was badly chipped, and it ate up a lot of speed. After that, he had to look for a step rhythm, and he couldn’t really find it, Jaakko Ojaniemi said.
In Ojaniemi’s opinion, Lehikoinen has generally been quite a strong starter, his crossing of the first fence has been smooth and after that the run has been able to continue well.
– Has he overcharged after the semi-final SE? Maybe he had such a strong desire to run hard that it ruined the initial run.
Senni Salmi also had problems in the final, because Salminen got a result of 14.13 on his first jump, but after that he overcame the rest of the jumps.
– Making Senn has always looked the same. Especially the last jump keeps bumping against, and he hasn’t been able to correct that technical error, Ojaniemi said.
He believes in Salminen and his coach Matti Mononen constantly aware of what is going on, but the error has not yet been corrected. Ojaniemi believes that Salminen is partially satisfied with the final, because he made it to the final of the prize competition for the first time. Before this, Salminen has narrowly qualified for both the Olympic and World Cup finals.
– Based on the jumps this summer, you couldn’t have expected much more from him. He probably expected that if he had gotten his technique right, there would have been a lot more dimension to the jump.
The European Championship week in Munich can be seen on channels from August 11 to August 21. You can find live broadcasts, highlights, the competition schedule, interesting news and topics on ‘s competition page.