Janne Ahonen quits ski-jumping - and this time around it's for good

“I will never jump again. You don’t do this just for fun”, says five-time winner of Four Hills tournament

Janne Ahonen

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When Finnish ski-jumping legend Janne Ahonen ended his jumping career for the first time in the summer of 2008, he felt somewhat lost and bereft. This is why he came back to the sport in the autumn of 2009.
     
Yesterday, however, Ahonen, 33, jumped his last jump.
      In a competition held in his home town and on his favourite hill, the largest of the three Salpausselkä hills, the HS-130 concrete hill, Ahonen finished down in a lowly 34th place and failed to qualify for the second round.
      “Now I’ve done it”, Ahonen said. “This is where it all started and this is where it ends. I will never jump again. You don’t do this just for fun.”
      Ahonen explained that after his first “retirement” from the sport he still had a strong flame deep inside him to return to compete. Now that flame has gone out permanently.
      ”If an athlete vacillates between continuing and quitting the sport, from experience I can say that it pays to continue.”
     
Ahonen’s farewell competition was won by Simon Ammann of Switzerland, ahead of Andreas Kofler of Austria and Severin Freund of Germany. Finland’s Matti Hautamäki finished tenth.
      Another Finn who made it to the second round was the 16-year-old Jarkko Määttä, who unfortunately fell on his second round 116.5-metre effort and ultimately finished no higher than 30th.
      The competition itself was fine, but other men than the top three were the ones to get the loudest cheers from the 10,000-strong crowd.
      Ahonen was the man of the hour, but according to the decibel metre the second most popular figure in Lahti was Poland’s Adam Malysz, who will retire from the sport in two weeks’ time. In Salpausselkä, Malysz landed in 15th place.
     
Ahonen will not turn his back on ski-jumping altogether. Already on Tuesday he will oversee his nine-year-old son Mico’s practice.
      Ahonen did receive an invitation to Malysz’s farewell competition in Zakopane, Poland, in two weeks’ time, but he decided to skip the event as his son will have his season-ending competition on the same day.
      In Taivalkoski, Ahonen will serve in the dual role of chauffeur and coach.
      “For Mico it is the most important event of the season. He has been waiting for us to go there together for a long time.”
     
Ahonen’s last-ever jump carried him to the 117-metre mark. In practice he has flown over 135 metres from the same hill.
      “It would have been nice to jump in the second round as well. I was not aiming for any particular result, nor was I really after World Cup points. I just would have wanted to jump one more time.”
      Ahonen did not wish to discuss his future plans. He stated that he has lived as a public figure for nearly 20 years.
      “In the future not everybody needs to know what I am up to”, he stated.
     
As Ahonen kept answering the interviewers’ questions while munching chocolate sweets, the Polish national hero Malysz laughed that his own diet was going to continue for another week.
      Malysz said that after the ski-jumping career is over he will have to sit down and think hard about his future.
      “One thing is certain. I will not go back to the hill. When I quit I quit.”
      While Ahonen continues as a drag racer, Malysz, too, is interested in motorsports.
      He has been offered a chance to compete in the Dakar desert rally. Ahonen’s next drag race is in England in May.
      Of Malysz, Ahonen said: “He has deserved all his success. He always has his feet firmly on the ground, except when he’s flying through the air. He is a humble and fine fellow.”
     
Janne Ahonen never won an individual gold medal at the olympics, but in all other respects his career in the sport is hard to match: he has ten World Championship medals, including two individual golds, plus two World Cup titles from 2004 and 2005, and perhaps most significantly he is the only ski-jumper ever to win five times the prestigious Four Hills tournament held annually on both sides of the New Year.
      In a career stretching back to 1993, he has amassed 36 World Cup victories, the most podium positions (108) of any jumper throughout the history of the sport, and the greatest aggregate number of points scored.
      Only Matti Nykänen (46 wins) and Adam Malysz (39) have won more World Cup competitions.
     
Sadly, this last season has been a bitter disappointment, even something of a nightmare for him: it cannot have been easy for someone used to stepping up onto the podium to find himself regularly eliminated from competitions after one not-very-inspiring jump.
      In actual fact, Ahonen's comeback was not all quite so low-key.
      When he returned to the sport in 2009, many questioned the move, but he quickly proved them wrong by finishing second to Andreas Kofler of Austria in the year's Four Hills event.
      During the 2009-2010 season he also added three more World Cup podium finishes to his imposing collection and finished just outside the top ten for the year, being the highest-placed Finnish jumper, ahead of some who were barely half his age.
     
Famed all too often for his apparent lack of emotion - Ahonen's reluctance to smile and gag for the cameras, even in triumph, was legendary - he has thoroughly earned his retirement from a sport in which his peers on Sunday were unanimous that he was an icon and one of the all-time greats.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Veteran ski-jumper Ahonen finishes second in Four Hills Tournament (7.1.2010)
  Biography sheds new light on ski-jumper Janne Ahonen´s eventful life (4.8.2009)
  Janne Ahonen to return to ski-jumping (9.3.2009)

See also:
  Janne Ahonen announces retirement from ski-jumping (26.3.2008)

Links:
  Janne Ahonen (FIS-Ski)
  Janne Ahonen (Wikipedia)

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