According to Pia Nykänen, it would have been in the public’s interest if Matti Nykänen had been made into a statue.
Matti Nykänen The memorial was unveiled to the public on Wednesday at Jyväskylä’s Hippos sports park. The widow of a hill jumping legend Pia Nykänen told quickly on Instagram her own negative opinion about her husband’s monument.
Iltalehti contacted Pia to comment Kaarina Kaikkonen As a feather designated memorial. The widow would have preferred a statue of Matis.
– Originally, it was the wish of the relatives that it would have been a statue. After all, a vote was held for the people, who were of the same opinion. It didn’t go through, Pia Nykänen tells Iltalehte.
Kaikkonen justified ignoring the statue. In his opinion, a better choice was public art, which lasts over time. The work has to work for those people who don’t remember Matt.
The monument weighing 56 tons is made of stainless steel in the shape of a feather. It describes a jumper on which Mati’s first skis are made to point towards the sky.
On the side of the monument is Mati’s face, lifetime and Olympic rings as a sign of four Olympic victories.
– If you think of people who come from outside Jyväskylä, you would have immediately seen from the statue that it is the best hill jumper in the world. Now you have to go closer to see what this thing is.
Pia does not want to upset the creator of the artwork in any way. The work has certainly been thought about from many different angles. Everyone has their own opinion. Some like it and some don’t.
He thinks that Mattik would certainly have taken the statue sooner.
– He was really modest, so Matti probably wouldn’t have wanted anything (a memorial), Pia said.
Pia had received an invitation to the announcement event in Jyväskylä, but she didn’t have time to travel more than 300 kilometers due to work.
Stop news, that quite a mistake had slipped into Mat’s memorial. The steel skis of the work listed the achievements of the ski jumper. In one of the titles, it was wrongly written that Suurmäki’s Olympic silver was from the Sarajevo 1984 Olympics, although in reality Matti won gold from Suurmäki.
– That is a really bad mistake. You should be careful with those. Everyone knows that gold came from there. Embarrassing event, Pia commented on the mistake.
– If we are going to do it, it should be done properly. Such mistakes shouldn’t happen.
Artist Kaikkonen apologized to STT for the mistake. According to him, it was “our own human spelling mistake”, which will be corrected as soon as possible.
Piia Nykänen became a widow when Matti Nykänen died in February 2019. Riitta Heiskanen