SPORTS ROUND-UP: Sotkamo win Finnish-rules baseball title; FC Haka take football honours

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While most eyes were on Europe’s golfers and their resounding triumph in the Ryder Cup, two Finnish ball-sports series saw champions crowned at the weekend, and Finns collected a brace of medals at the World Orienteering Championships in Sweden. Finland’s tennis No.1 also managed to string together a few victories after a long lean patch.
     
     
FINNISH-RULES BASEBALL
     
In pesäpallo, or Finnish-rules baseball, Jymy of Sotkamo took their fourth successive championship title on Sunday, winning the third match of the best-of-three final against Kiteen Pallo.
      The game turned into a thriller, since it went right down to the wire and the so-called "super innings", after a third period failed to separate the teams. Kitee had delayed the award of the trophy by upsetting their opponents in Saturday’s second game, winning both periods, by 4-3 and 2-1. The first match in Sotkamo had seen the hosts pushed to the limit before they won in a tie-breaking scoring competition similar to that played out on Sunday.
      Sotkamo, a small town east of Kajaani, is arguably the Finnish-rules baseball capital of Finland. The team has played in 13 finals since 1986.
      In the women’s finals, completed the previous weekend, Lapua emerged winners over Jyväskylä, in a repeat of the 2001 showdown. They won both the opening two matches and so did not need to face off in a decider on Sunday. It was the team’s sixth Championship title.
     
Finnish-rules baseball - pesäpallo in Finnish - is Finland's traditional summer ball-sport, though it is perhaps losing ground somewhat in the face of football. The power-bases for the two sports are in any event very different: whereas football tends to be strong in industrial centres and the larger cities, baseball remains essentially a rural sport.
      Sotkamo, for example, is a community with a population of not much more than 11,000, and yet the local team rules the roost in the sport and draws enthusiastic crowds of 3,000 for home fixtures.
      A modern competition game is played in two periods of four innings each. A period is won by the team which scores more runs in its offensive half-innings. If each of the teams wins one period, the game will be decided by an extra period, which consists of one inning and, if necessary to break the tie, by a special scoring contest.
      Details of pesäpallo and its history can be found from the linked articles below. Finnish-rules baseball is currently rebuilding its image after a damaging match-fixing scandal a few years ago.
     
     
FOOTBALL
     
On Saturday, FC Haka from Valkeakoski wrapped up their ninth Finnish Football League title with two matches still to be played in the league season. Haka won 4-3 in a free-scoring match against Myllykosken Pallo, with the winner coming from a Sami Ristilä penalty five minutes from the end of normal time.
      Haka started the day ten points clear of Tampere United, who had a game in hand. Haka needed a win to guarantee that United could not catch them, but as it happened the Tampere side’s chances vanished in a 1-0 defeat away to Inter of Turku.
      Haka went one down to an early strike from Saku Puhakainen, but goals from veteran Valeri Popovich and Toni Lehtinen had them back in the driving seat by the half-hour mark.
      Just before half-time Puhakainen struck again, and after Haka went 3-2 up on 77 minutes the visitors responded with another goal from Toni Huttunen. With only a few minutes remaining, it looked briefly as though Haka’s celebrations might have to wait, but Ristilä converted the penalty after Toni Lehtinen had been pulled down in the box.
      This year has seen a double celebration in Valkeakoski. FC Haka are marking their 70th anniversary.
     
     
ORIENTEERING
     
Finland’s orienteering women provided the only medals from a rather disappointing week at the World Championships in Fagersta, Sweden.
      On Saturday Heli Jukkola took bronze in the middle distance event, matching her performance in Switzerland last year. The race this year was won by Hanne Staff of Norway, who collected her third World Championship title. Russia’s Tanya Ryabkina was 11 seconds back in second, with Jukkola 27 seconds behind the winner.
      On Sunday the women went one better, as the trio of Marika Mikkola, Minna Kauppi, and Heli Jukkola took silver in the relay, finishing just 2.4 seconds adrift of the Swedish team, with the Norwegians well beaten back in third. It was a see-saw race, with the Finns leading by as much as 80 seconds at one point.
      The Finnish men could not match their female counterparts. The best individual results came from Mats Haldin (6th) and Pasi Ikonen (7th) in the long event over 17km, and the relay squad of Haldin, Jani Lakanen and Jarkko Huovila finished fourth behind Norway, Russia, and Sweden. A medal to go with last year’s relay silver was never really in prospect, as the Finns came in over a minute and a half behind the top three teams, who were separated by less than five seconds at the line.
     
     
TENNIS
     
Jarkko Nieminen, Finland’s leading tennis player, has not enjoyed the best of fortunes this summer. He broke his wrist in a match in Monte Carlo in April, and missed out on the French Open and Wimbledon. He only returned to the ATP circuit in July. Although his ranking had slipped considerably in the intervening period, Nieminen did qualify for a trip to the Athens Olympics, but he went out in the second round. He also crashed out in the opening round at the US Open.
      However, there are encouraging signs that the left-hander is getting back to something like his old form. Playing last week in the China Open in Beijing, he disposed of 7th seed Taylor Dent and 3rd seed David Nalbandian on his way to the semi-finals. There he found Marat Safin too good for him. The Russian former World No.1 won comfortably 6-2, 6-4, and went on to take his first ATP title since the Masters tournament in Paris in 2002.
      Nieminen can nevertheless feel well pleased with his week’s work, which will probably nudge him back up the rankings from the lowly 71st position he has dropped to. He next heads for Israel, where Finland meet the hosts in a tough Davis Cup Europe/Africa Zone play-off.
     
     
P.S. Finland’s rugby players  suffered a crushing defeat in their 2007 World Cup qualifier against Bulgaria on Saturday. The Finns, playing first at home in the two-legged match, scored a penalty early on to take a 3-0 lead, but that was as good as it got, and they were overpowered and went down 42-3. The reverse fixture, which now appears to be a formality, will be in Sofia on October 30th.
Rugby is not a particularly well-developed sport on these shores, and Finland ranks 95th in the world, but the relative success of Finland’s American football players - at least within Europe - suggests that better things may lie ahead when they get the hang of the niceties of the game.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Marika Mikkola wins bronze medal at Orienteering World Championships (17.9.2004)

Links:
  Pesäpallo helps define us
  Finnish-rules Baseball: International Site
  World Orienteering Championships 2004, Fagersta, Sweden
  ATP Tennis: Jarkko Nieminen

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