Riku Isokoski
Finnish track and field athletes are too easily satisfied with domestic competitions, when the gates would be open to the world. And that’s a bad thing, writes Riku Isokoski.
Travel usually broadens the horizon, but Finnish track and field athletes prefer to stay by their mother’s meat pots and in the company of their own group of friends in their native Finland.
Among the Finnish athletics stars, only Wilma Murto has moved to the level where she mainly competes in the sport’s top competitions abroad.
Finnish track and field athletes aiming for the top should definitely aim to see them in real action in Finland as a rarity.
Murto is in that group, the others are far away.
Of course, Finland has a traditional athletics culture, and competitions are often organized with solid expertise and passion all over the provinces.
But it is very difficult from here to rise to the international top level and bigger jobs if the foreign countries are not particularly attractive.
A concrete individual example of the problem was javelin thrower Oliver Helander’s decision to compete in Mikkeli next week, even though the Diamond League competition in Monaco would have been an alternative.
Helander’s manager Tero Heiska said To Ylethat Helander would have easily gotten a place in Monaco if he had been offered to the organizers.
If he succeeded, Helander could have won big prize money in Monaco, because in the Diamond League, the winner of the competition receives a good 9,000 euros and the runner-up a measly 5,400.
In Mikkeli, the main prize is 2,500 euros, but in the end it doesn’t matter much.
By skipping Monaco, Helander weakens his chances of reaching the season-ending Diamond League finals in Eugene, where the prize money is several times higher compared to other competitions in the series.
For Yle, Helander’s choice was justified, among other things, by the fact that when traveling decreases, there is more training time.
Well, the flight from Helsinki to Nice and then the ride to Monaco isn’t such a heavy start that critical training hours would be lost because of it.
The problem of hometown love affects Finnish athletics more broadly, because there would be enough opportunities to compete in the world.
In addition to the Diamond League, numerous competitions are organized in Europe during the summer, where the prize money and level would be much better than in Finland, but domestic competitions in shabby stadiums in the backwoods are still attractive.
There are also few Finns who would seek long-term development from the overwhelming number one country in athletics, the United States.
The model can be seen, for example, in many Finnish team sports athletes, who have netted many times more earnings from abroad than they would have ever received from Finland. And you have risen to a tough international level.
Kolea far north is not the place where dreams come true.
Wilma Murto is rarely seen competing in Finland anymore. Marko Tuominiemi, AOP