Somali-born Mohammed is bright spot in Finnish amateur boxing

The 17-year-old from Lahti dreams of representing Finland in international tournaments

print this

By Pekka Hurme
     
      The name Ibrahim Mohammed may not be the first one to leap to mind when one thinks about Finnish sports and Finnish boxing.
      In what proved to be a very tough GeeBee boxing tournament last week, Ibrahim Mohammed or "Ibu", who represents the Lahden Kaleva sports club, nevertheless made a very favourable impression as one of only two Finnish fighters to make it to the finals.
      Eventually Mohammed did lose on points (14-10) in a three-round battle royal against the Estonian Champion Nikolai Chaskin, but all the same the Somali-born Finn's performance in the ring in the Light Flyweight (under 48 kg) class was promising to say the least.
      "I should have done better. At times I did not hold my fists up high enough. The first round went well, but after that I started getting tired", Ibrahim Mohammed commented on his performance.
     
The 17-year-old boy from the southern city of Lahti "speaks better Finnish than Somali".
      That is not so surprising, for Ibrahim left the city of his birth - Mogadishu - at the age of two with his mother, father, two sisters and four brothers.
      Fleeing from the war in Somalia, the family first landed in Ethiopia and Addis Ababa.
      After having spent two years there as refugees, they finally ended up in Finland.
      As the youngest of the lot, Ibrahim is being well looked after by his mother Hawa in Lahti.
      His father has passed away, and the older siblings have flown the nest and now live in Helsinki.
     
"First I played some football, but then a friend suggested that we try boxing at the Kaleva Gym [in Lahti]. I went there a couple of times, got into it, and then Kari Korhonen started coaching me. He is an excellent coach and mentor. My aim is to represent Finland in some international boxing tournaments", Mohammed explains, with his eyes firmly set on events like the European Amateur Championships.
     
This year's GeeBee Tournament, named after the Finnish heavyweight Gunnar Bärlund (1911-1982) was of a particularly high standard, and did not offer the hosts much in the way of positive signals going towards the 2012 London Olympics.
      The only other Finnish finalist was Niklas Räsänen, who was fighting in the light heavyweight category (under 81 kg).
      Räsänen fell far short of his best form in the final.
      The Estonian champion Ainar Karlson dominated the first round and managed to open up Räsänen's nose in such a way that the bout had to be stopped by the referee in the second round.
     
By the time 2012 Olympics come around, it will be 20 years since Finland last won an Olympic medal in boxing, so there is every need to bring a new crop of fighters through.
      At the Barcelona Games in 1992, Jyri Kjäll took a bronze medal in the light welterweight division. Before him, welterweight Joni Nyman took bronze in Los Angeles in 1984, but we have to go all the way back to Helsinki and 1952 for the most recent gold medallist. Pentti Hämäläinen took the bantamweight title in Helsinki, where Finland actually managed to claim five medals in the ring.
      Joni Turunen, who fought without much success in Sydney in 2000 as a featherweight, is the last person to have represented Finland in the Olympic boxing arena.
      In all, Finnish boxers have brought home two gold, one silver, and 11 bronze medals from the Olympics.
      Curiously enough, Gunnar "GeeBee" Bärlund was not one of those medallists, although he did take the European title in 1934 and went on to become a contender for the professional heavyweight crown, being ranked 2nd in line to fight Joe Louis in 1938.
      A statue to GeeBee stands in Helsinki's Vallila district, and was featured in an earlier IntEd article on sporting sculptures in the capital.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.4.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Sportsmen set in stone in the capital (17.11.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat