A wonderful tribute to Saga Vannis

Saga Vanninen finished seventh at the World Championships in Tokyo. Jenni Gästgivar

A septuagenarian Saga Vanninen has been chosen as the Athlete of the Year at the Finnish Sports Association’s Athletics Gala.

During the season, the 22-year-old Vanninen won the pentathlon at the European Championships in Apeldoorn, Holland, and at the World Championships in Nanjing, China. At the European Junior Championships in Bergen, he won the heptathlon with a Finnish record score of 6563, and the SE points of 4922 in the European indoor pentathlon confirmed his top condition.

In the final race of the season at the World Championships in Tokyo, Vanninen finished seventh in the heptathlon.

Vanninen couldn’t make it to the event himself, but sent video greetings from his training camp in South Africa.

– It was nice to get such a choice. A big thank you for that, Vanninen said in the video greetings, according to SUL’s press release.

Rehearsals in progress

Vanninen has trained at the recently started training camp in South Africa’s Potchefstroom together with his coach Erki Noolin and the Estonian seventh grader Pippi Lotta Enok with.

– The conditions here are good for training, and it was also good for the mind to get somewhere else from the grayness of autumn in Finland. It’s harder to train in a group than alone. I feel that he is a good addition to the group, Vanninen says in the press release.

Vanninen has returned to the training season after the World Championships in Tokyo and only had a short transition season.

– The WC competitions in Tokyo left quite a lot of hunger, so now at least I have a lot of motivation to train. I wanted to get back to training pretty quickly, Vanninen says.

Training largely follows last year’s formula, but now the emphasis is clearly on increasing the number of jumps and jumps.

– Last year, there was still a bit of back pain in the background in the fall. Now I was able to train intact, so that way there are better starting points, he says.

The focus is already on the winter competitions, and the international culmination of the indoor season is the World Indoor Championships held in March in Toruń, Poland.

– We haven’t talked to Erki in detail yet, but there are probably two matches in the Hall season. The World Cup halls are the main target and there will probably be another match in Tallinn, Vanninen says.

Many other people were also awarded at the athletics gala. 12 competing long jumpers and sprinters in the visually impaired category were awarded as the Paralympic Athlete of the Year Iida Lounela.