Sporting heroes with their lives in order

An end to the days of the "wild child" sports star?

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By Jakke Holvas
     
      Thank heaven for small mercies. At the European Athletics Championships in Gothenburg earlier this month, Finland got itself a trio of sporting heroes who will not end up as strippers when they retire from the track or field.
      The success of Jukka Keskisalo (gold in the 3,000 metres steeplechase), Tero Pitkämäki (silver in the javelin), and Olli-Pekka Karjalainen (silver in the hammer-throw) went some way to dissolving that sense of awkwardness and embarrassment that has been engendered by this summer's repeated tabloid headlines, regaling the drunken travails of former ski-jumping hero Matti Nykänen or the Olympic cross-country skier Mika Myllylä.
      Our new sporting heroes may not be Einsteins in tracksuits, but they are certainly a more far-sighted lot.
     
Finnish athletes have often been associated with a kind of myth of elemental strength - the "force of nature" approach to success.
      The sportsman's talents are believed to well up magically from some pure spring, a fountain where nothing ever changes. In these parts, people want to hear stories of child prodigies who cannot read or write and who stumble rather blindly through their private lives off the track - but who are nevertheless mighty champions.
      In addition to the much-documented problems of Nykänen and Myllylä, former rallying world champion Juha Kankkunen has spoken publicly about his excessive drinking. The rumour-mill has it that ice hockey star Jere Karalahti once partied all night during a World Championships tournament and took to the rink - presumably nursing a nasty hangover - in a match the following day, in which he was voted the best player on the ice.
     
According to sociologist Esa Sironen, who has been examining the change taking place in attitudes to sport, the belief in Finland has been that personal awareness somehow spoils the athlete.
      "Our European Championships medallists nevertheless show that raw power is not harmed by a little in the way of education", says Sironen.
      Education is a common denominator amongst all three men. Keskisalo is reading economics at Joensuu University, Pitkämäki graduated from the Vaasa Polytechnic in the spring as an electrical engineer, and hammer-thrower Karjalainen is studying for a political science degree at the University of Helsinki.
      Sironen argues that this new breed of sportsman - and there are women in similar positions, too - has an additional factor in that they are coming into sports from the middle classes, and after their careers that is where they will return.
     
Arguably the prototype for this new type of "intellectual jock" was long-distance walker Valentin Kononen. He brought something new into Finnish sport, as a representative of a novel type of "analytical athlete" who could deliver lengthy and articulate analyses of his chosen discipline.
      Kononen, who is also the best distance walker Finland has ever produced, studied computer science towards the end of his active career, and he now has his own business.
      "I witnessed a huge change in the environment during my sporting career from the late 1980s up to the beginning of the new century. By the end, there were several quite well-educated Finnish athletes, forming a whole phalanx across different sports", says Kononen.
     
One of the new breed is the marathon runner Janne Holmén, who has a Ph.D. to his name in addition to a gold medal at the European Championships in Munich four years ago.
      In his case it is somewhat more difficult to apply the old adage of "the further they run, the dimmer they are" - the 29-year-old runner successfully defended his doctoral thesis at the history department of the University of Uppsala in May of this year. He also defended his European title, finishing a creditable 7th in his event in Gothenburg.
      Kononen is not at all surprised at Holmén's career progress.
      "Athletics and post-graduate thesis work are by no means incompatible, since the researcher does not have to attend lectures all the time."
      Kononen takes the view that the actual performance on the track or on the field becomes more relaxed when the athlete knows that there is always going to be an alternative to sporting success: a profession that matches one's training.
     
The top sportsman who also studies for a degree combines two demanding disciplines: a heavy and professional training regimen and concerted studying.
      In the case of 23-year-old Tero Pitkämäki, his degree diploma is a demonstration of serious grit: in order to get his studies completed, Pitkämäki was putting in 50-hour weeks last spring.
      He thinks it was worth it. "My active career is still ongoing, but I don't think I will run into trouble when it is over. I have a profession ready and waiting", Pitkämäki says.
      In the view of Olli-Pekka Karjalainen, 26, reading for exams and training actually complement one another. "In the fall it is nice to get back to school, and when the spring comes around to return to the gym and the throwing circle."
     
Karjalainen has no immediate need to worry about his post-athletics career. Hammer-throwers can stay at the top of the tree until they are in their mid-30s.
      "I have been criticised for the fact that school has got in the way of sport. But I have simply told the critics where to get off", he says bluntly.
      Jukka Keskisalo is enrolled at Joensuu University reading economics, but the 25-year-old European Champion is reluctant to bracket himself with Pitkämäki or Karjalainen.
      "Pitkämäki has already graduated, and Karjalainen is well on his way. I may have a student's white cap from high school, and I may be enrolled at a university, but it'll be a long time before I get around to collecting any kind of degree..."
      Keskisalo put his studies on ice at Christmas 2002. "It was a good thing that I decided to take time out for sport, but the other side of the coin is the stress that comes from leaving your courses hanging in the air like that."
     
Keskisalo then raises a point that that armchair athletes may not have considered, but which Karjalainen also indirectly referred to: the supporters and sponsors of an athlete keep a sharp eye on whether he or she uses his time for training or for studying.
      A top sportsman has to bear in mind that the sponsors may also begin to wonder if they are backing the right horse. They may lose confidence when the athlete himself is covering the possibility of failure on the track by studying "just to be on the safe side".
     
Esa Sironen believes that the change in the sporting archetype hereabouts is most obviously in evidence in that quintessentially Finnish event, the javelin.
      "Seppo Räty and Kimmo Kinnunen are cut from a completely different cloth than Tapio Korjus, Aki Parviainen, or Tero Pitkämäki", he says.
      Seppo Räty, a multiple medallist at World and Olympic level, became famous for his bluff and often offensive remarks, and Kinnunen for the fact that he claimed to have read only one book in his entire life, a war-novel.about commandos. These two - or rather the media with their assistance - bolstered the image of the Finnish athlete as a primitive "enfant sauvage".
      "I mean the idea that the lower social classes and the rural areas produce real men of raw power, and not these analytical types who can describe their performance in high-faluting language", offers Sironen.
     
But "intellectual jocks" are only one category of sportsmen. A good many succesful athletes in various sports have gone on to make a career in Finnish politics after they hung up their tracksuits.
      Sironen notes that the athlete-politician is already a tradition in Finland: hurdler Arto Bryggare, pole-vaulter (and cabinet minister) Antti Kalliomäki, distance runner and quadruple Olympic gold medallist Lasse Virén, walker Sari Essayah, cross-country skier Marjo Matikainen are names that come to mind. All have parlayed athletic success and the accompanying fame and social prominence into a seat in Parliament.
      The role-model in this instance was arguably Sylvi Saimo, who took a surprise kayaking gold medal at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. She had spent her entire life doing farming work, and after her sporting career came to an end she was a Centre Party MP for more than a decade.
      "That was a time when sport and politics belonged together", says Sironen.
     
A new time brought new connections - the uneasy union of sport and alcohol.
      This was personified in the sporting archetype of "the fallen man of the people", with the most spectacular example - and the biggest fall from grace - coming naturally in the tragic figure of Matti Nykänen.
      The pattern is a familiar one: success brings dizzying fame, fame brings hangers-on, and the hangers-on place pints and more in front of the somewhat dazzled athlete.
      "In the 1970s, Ässät of Pori won the Finnish ice hockey championship title. They say that some of the members of that victorious team are still celebrating the trophy even today", notes Sironen with only a touch of irony.
      For sportsmen who have risen from the ranks of the people and who have gone off the rails at their new-found fame, it seems to come as a surprise that life does change after the final whistle blows.
      "Then you should also ask whose fault it really is that the sportsman does not know anything else but his event", says Sironen.
     
According to Tero Pitkämäki, it is no good the individual blaming others for excessive drinking. The greatest responsibility lies with the athlete himself.
      "A person has to be able to exercise self-control. Of course those people backing him in the background have some significance, and also perhaps the sports federations, but you can't go throwing the blame or the responsibility on the media."
      Jukka Keskisalo, too, has pondered the drinking problems of former sports stars. "After their career ends, they still have all this incredible energy left, and they really don't know where or how to channel it."
      Ultimately, Keskisalo's interest in the marriage of sport and hard liquor lies in whether the resulting bad press hurts sport.
      When the headlines are about the tired and emotional behaviour of people who have already ended their sporting careers, the responsibility lies with them. "The sports federations have their hands full trying to support active athletes. How can they then be expected to find the time and resources to help former stars?"
     
It is quite hard to imagine that this summer's trio of medallists from Gothenburg will wind up twenty years from now knocking back too many vodkas at the expense of some gossip magazine.
      In Karjalainen's opinion that only happens if a person is left alone and adrift.
      "When success kind of ambushes you at an early age, and the sportsman is suddenly in the limelight everywhere, it's not really any wonder that the wheels start to spin wildly. But if the background conditions are right, that sort of thing should not happen."
      Karjalainen can speak with a measure of experience. He has been backed throughout by his family, and, importantly, he has had the same coach ever since he was twelve. He also has a PR manager and a competitions manager, and can call on the services of a sports psychologist, who keeps his feet firmly on the ground.
      He says that he is planning for a career as a "civil servant-sportsman".
      "I haven't thought about the idea of getting into politics. I'll complete my degree with an eye to going into a civil servant occupation - and that's where the real power is anyway", he laughs.
     
Karjalainen also warns against generalising and oversimplifying sportsmen into some kind of genotype.
      "Look, there have always been all kinds of different folks involved in sports. Just because someone is ‘of the people' doesn't mean they have to be somehow dumb. In the case of Seppo Räty for instance, he's a man with whom you could have long and considered discussions on training methods. Arguably, Kinnunen and Räty went through their universities on the athletics field."
      Nonetheless, some kind of change is in the air, and academic sportsmen and sportswomen will definitely be stepping up to the podium more and more often.
      One of them might well be the Joensuu-based heptathlete Maija Kovalainen.
      This 24-year-old set her personal best at the European Championships and came in 18th, in her first appearance at a major competition. In addition to performing at the top level, she has already graduated with an engineering degree from the Lappeenranta University of Technology.
      She admits that what with intensive training and study there has not been much time left over for anything else, but it was a conscious choice she made and she does not regret it or feel she has missed out on anything. And she has still found room to do some modelling work, too.
     
Whether athletes are smarter or not, one thing has not changed one iota: in Finnish sport success has to come first, perferably in the shape of a medal at some international competition, and only then is the athlete permitted to analyse and justify their doings.
      Olli-Pekka Karjalainen has also gone through the school of hard knocks on the athletics field.
      "The times when your performance is way under par and you wind up getting knocked out before the final, the best way is never to explain or complain. Aki Parviainen told me many years back that when you've got a medal in your hand it does all the explaining you'll ever need."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.8.2006

More on this subject:
 A new breed of Finnish track and field athlete

JAKKE HOLVAS / Helsingin Sanomat
jakke.holvas@hs.fi