Skiing Lahti has offered first shocks to Finland’s skiing promises – Perttu Hyvärinen and Iivo Niskanen received their baptism at the same time: “Were we reached the finish line?”

“Did you let go we finish? We probably didn’t make it. ”

I saw the best performers of his career at the Beijing Olympics Perttu Hyvärinen asks and answers the same breath himself when asked to recall the first personal competition of his career in the World Ski Cup.

That’s right: the goal was not reached.

Statistics from the International Ski Federation FIS show that Hyvärinen’s first personal mc race was the 20-kilometer combined race in Lahti in March 2011.

The 64th is marked as an investment in the statistics, but the result list reads three letters for the rest of the time: LAP.

It meansthat the tip caught Hyvärinen in the round, followed by flagging off the track. Eight other men experienced the same fate, including the second mc debutant Iivo Niskanenmarked 69th.

Hyvärinen and Niskanen have been friends and competitors since childhood, so it is natural that Hyvärinen remembers that race as if in the me-form.

“It was a tough experience among the big boys. On a short track (2.5 km) you had to stay pretty close to the top hose if you wanted to even get to the finish line, ”recalls Hyvärinen, who had won three medals at the World Championships for young people earlier that winter.

Already a year earlier, Hyvärinen and Niskanen were involved in Lahti and skied in the Finnish third team, which belonged to the stern.

In practice The careers of all current Finnish national team skiers in the World Cup have begun in the national quotas of the domestic World Cup, ie Ruka and Lahti, as early as junior age.

Of the women who competed in the Olympics, four have made their debut in Ruka and three in Lahti. All six men made their debut in Lahti.

“They’re tough level gauges, but they were only worth getting in the best shape. It was a good experience there, ”says Hyvärinen.

In Finland’s most important national competitions, ie the Finnish Championships and the Finnish Cup competitions, the competition has generally been relatively easy.

“But when we go to the World Cup in Finland, we ski on really hard trails and fierce races. From that, the reality brightens that raw physics only shows up then. When you are young, you can do well on easy trails at the Finnish level, but yes, they were mainly shocking when you got to the World Cup when you were young. ”

In the said In the combined competition, Hyvärinen, Niskanen and two other young Finns from the national group were flagged out in the last quarter.

The difference in level to the top of the world was partly due to the fact that after skiing for more than half an hour at 13.7 km intervals, Hyvärinen was more than three minutes and Niskanen half a minute more.

Hyvärinen gives a detail about the race, which now feels quite exotic during Korona.

“I don’t remember who the Finn was in, but they drank the same drink with him. I gave the bottle back to him, ”Hyvärinen says with a laugh.

Competition won Switzerland after a church battle Dario Colognawho had achieved the first of four Olympic victories in his career last winter.

The inevitable cycle of the sport is reflected in the fact that Cologna, who turns 36 in March, will end his career this season. In recent years, he has occasionally reached the top ten in the World Cup.

Cologna, which finished 44th in the 15th kilometer of the Beijing Olympics, was almost four minutes behind the winner of Niskan and almost three minutes behind Hyvärinen, who finished sixth.

In the 15-kilometer traditional cross-country skiing race in Lahti on Sunday, Finland will be represented by 19-year-olds from Norway in the host country’s quota for under-23s. Niko Anttola and Alexander Ståhlberg.

Ståhlberg made his debut at the mc level last winter in Lahti, but on Friday with the World Cup silver Anttola is facing the first competition of his career in the World Cup.

Now it’s their turn to have a tough experience with the big boys.

The Lahti World Cup will feature competitions in cross-country free sprints on Saturday and traditional breakouts on Sundays. There are also combined and hill jump races on both days.