Arttu Lappi celebrated the ski jumping World Cup gold and the World Cup competition victory, but bad setbacks slowed down his career. The new career has been successful.
– I had a great career while it lasted, Arttu Lappi says and laughs.
It was also a top career.
The ex-ski jumper, who turns 40 in May, was an extremely promising athlete at the beginning of the 2000s, who reached the Val di Fiemme World Championships at the age of 18 with the team hill gold Janne Ahonen, Tami Kiurun and Matti Hautamäki. In the Normalimäki race, he was sixth.
Lappi shares brutally that he had two top seasons. The first was in 2002–03, which culminated in Val di Fiemme’s achievements, and the second in 2006–07.
– I was terrified, Lappi says about the latter.
At the end of 2006, Lapland won the opening race of the World Cup season held in Kuusamo, which was shortened to one round due to the weather. Just a few weeks later, during the hill week, Lappi was the best Finnish sixth in the overall results.
– This winter, when I looked at mountain week, I thought that I myself have been in the top 10 and that those who are in the top 10 are really hard workers.
Golden team. Janne Ahonen, Matti Hautamäki, Tami Kiuru and Arttu Lappi celebrate Finland’s latest team hill world championship. PDO
Violent blows
However, Lapland’s career can also be described as ragged. Lappi suffered a bad injury between his top seasons in 2004, when his skis did not come off his leg when he fell and he broke his fibula.
More came at the end of the 2006–07 season and after. Lappin’s ankle was operated on several times, and in 2009, he lost the anterior cruciate ligament.
– It meant four reconstructive surgeries in the most important years of my career.
Lappi jumped the last World Cup competition of his career at the age of 25 in January 2010.
– I achieved a lot compared to what I could expect or hope for. As a child and young person, it was hoped to one day be a world champion, and for me it happened at the age of 18. It came a little early.
– The career left good memories. Many people have asked when you will return to the hill, but I didn’t have anything left in my teeth. I felt that I had achieved some really good things. I was ripe for the decision to quit, even though I was still quite young and there would have been many potential top years ahead.
Lappi is still a familiar sight on the Karpalo hills in Lahti, for example, because his son enjoys ski jumping and combined. Arttu Lap’s home album
A million dollar business
Lapland didn’t end up in a mont on its back side. During his career, he studied law at the University of Lapland and graduated a few months after the end of his career in May 2010.
Right after graduating, Lappi started working at a large law firm, Hannes Snellman, from where he moved to the law firm Fondia. Lappi was in the service of others until the end of 2020.
– If there had been no injuries and the success would have been more consistent as a result, you never know if I would have continued longer, Lappi spins.
– But it was an easy decision to go straight to work after graduation.
In January 2021, Lappi started a law firm specializing in business law called Vestra with five other founding partners. Founded three years ago, Vestra has 23 lawyers and a total of thirty employees.
The conditions of the Ruka race received criticism in 2006, but Arttu Lapp was not considered a surprise winner, even though the race was shortened to one round.
The founding six of Vestra started in the middle of the corona crisis, but the beginning has been fast. The turnover of Vestra Advisors, a subsidiary of the group, exceeded four million euros in its second financial period in 2022, while in the first financial period it was around 2.5 million. The company has been very profitable.
– I knew at an early stage that I also have ambition in working life. I probably already had it when I was studying and as an athlete. I knew that just doing a day job and filling my own plot was not enough of a challenge for myself.
“I really like”
Lappi admits that the 2010 transition from hill jumper to lawyer was a financially rational move.
– But you can make good money if you are a successful athlete. It’s just that, especially with individual athletes, it’s often so uncertain. Of course, the best situation is if Tiena earns from her hobby. If you feel that you are not doing so much work but your passion and hobby out of love for the sport, then it is a great life.
Lappi emphasizes that he has not reached a source even in terms of the meaningfulness of the work.
– Sometimes I am asked if I like my job. I really like it. This is a nice job, and I hope it shows to my clients and colleagues as well.
In his work, Lappi specializes in business and financial arrangements, but in addition to client work, he manages Vestra’s financial side.
Arttu Lappi and Janne Ahonen at the downhill World Championships in Oberstdorf 2008. AAPO LAIHO
Ahead of Ammann
During Lapland’s career, Finnish ski jumping was light and clear powder snow, but in recent years it has been more of a gray, heavy slush.
Lappi answers yes and no when asked if he was able to enjoy his career at the top of ski jumping.
– Now that you asked, maybe when you were young, under 25, you didn’t know how to approach things the same way as you do now. But I enjoyed it in the sense that there is no feeling left that I didn’t enjoy it.
Lappi suspects that at the age of 18, he did not understand how young he broke into the top of the world.
When Lappi was number one in Kuusamo in November 2006, he finished second Simon Ammann.
In the hill week that just ended, the 42-year-old Ammann finished 32nd, three places better than the best Finn, Antti Aalto.
– Probably, with the accumulation of life experience, he would have been able to value his career even more then in the everyday life of an athlete. I could imagine that a forty-year-old athlete’s attitude towards his own success and sports has already changed during his career.