Skiing | Iivo Niskanen’s brave journey will go down in history: “Sometimes I’ve been even better in my twenties”

Bay

Iivo Niskanen the season has fallen short of expectations, there’s no denying that fact.

During the winter, the multi-champion has participated in seven World Cup or World Cup individual competitions. The end result is two places in the top ten.

“It hasn’t been a complete bomb season, but of course a personal prize medal would have turned the situation around,” says Niskanen.

The season was ruined by the corona infection that struck in November. Niskanen says that by the time of the World Championships he was in “okay shape”, which was evident in the second leg of the silver relay, where the Finn hit a dizzying ride.

“After Corona, it was obvious that everything depends on one card, and Planica’s fifty was not nearly the kind of success I expected. I set out to win”, he emphasizes.

“The heart rate curves remain only as a memory and as a reminder of how 50 kilometers should have been skied. Attacking in the last round was just a tactical solution that I had already decided in advance.”

Niskanen, 31, experienced another setback the week after the World Cup when he got sick with the flu and had to miss the traditional ten in Falun.

“I had to take a break from training, and now there is only one better training after Planica. Fortunately, I was able to do the dog walking run, which didn’t really need any land.”

The Kuopio native still has a shot at brightening his dreary season on Sunday, when the traditional 20-kilometer joint start race is held in Salpauselka. Niskanen skied in Les Rousses in January on the same route to second place.

“We’ll see what happens on Sunday. Starting together is challenging on the Lahti track”, he says.

Neck has been the king of two distances throughout his top career: the traditional fifty and 15 kilometers. With his latest feats, Niskanen has won World Championship gold, Olympic gold and World Championship bronze.

There won’t be any more. The international skiing federation Fis has decided that instead of 15, men will ski 10 kilometers with an intermediate start already at the 2025 Trondheim World Cup. The Suomalaistahtahti has only skied two World Cup intermediate races in his career without significant success.

The change may sound dramatic, but in Niskanen’s opinion it is not. So there will probably be medals even with a third shorter distance.

He has a surprising assessment of his striking ability at ten.

“It doesn’t have a terrible effect, as long as the intermediate start is maintained and the terrains are hard enough. Sometimes I’ve been even better in my twenties when, for example, I think about value competition messages in Beijing and Planica. I’ve rarely skied badly in my twenties.”

Niskanen reminds that the scoreboard of a 15-kilometer race only rarely changes after the ten-kilometer interval.

“The differences are certainly smaller, but there will hardly be a revolutionary change, and I don’t see a problem with it in the big picture.”