Mäkäräinen biathlon world champ
Kaisa Mäkäräinen, 28, of Joensuu, became the first Finnish woman to have ever won the World Championship biathlon gold when she decisively took first place in the 10K pursuit at the title meet at Hanti-Mansisjk, Russia on March 6. Her cross-couintry skiing time was 30:00.01 and she missed no shots in the shooting stages. Magdalena Neuner of Germany won the silver 21.6 seconds behind but she missed two of her shots. In the 7.5k sprint the day before the Finn had scored a silver medal behind Neuner’s gold. Mäkäräinen’s great showing at the Worlds enabled her to increase her first place lead in the World Cup series which resumes following the Worlds.
Matti Heikkinen’s gold in the men’s 15K classical cross-country at another World Championship venue at Oslo, was the first for Finnish men in 12 years. Finnish men’s XC skiing took a nose-dive for years since the Lahti doping scandals in 2001 in which several Finnish skiiers were disqualified.. Two years ago at the Worlds, Heikkinen, 27, had won a bronze. Finnish men fared quite well at this Oslo race as Sami Jauhojärvi was 5th and Ville Nousiainen 8th.
Finnish women at Oslo did better at the podium than the men. Aino-Kaisa Saarinen picked up a bronze in the women’s classic 10K XC, with Marit Björgen of Norway the winner. Krista Lähteenmäki was 5th, Pirjo Muranen 6th, and Kerttu Niskanen 8th. Saarinen, 32, and Lähteenmäki, 20, combined in the 2x3x1.3km sprint relay to bring Finland the silver behind Sweden’s Ida Ingemarsdotter and Charlotte Kalla. It was Lahteenmäki’s first world championship medal. A Finnish team of Muranen, Saarinen, Riitta-Liisa Roponen and Lähteenmäki scored a bronze in the 4x5 team relays. Norway with Björgen as anchor won the gold, and Sweden anchored by Kalla took the silver.
Peetu Piiroinen, 23, cinched his third successive championship even before the TTR World Snowboard Tour was over, even before the US Open. He had sufficient points so nobody could catch him at this stage. Piiroinen won the silver in the men’s halfpipe at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver behind USA’s Shaun White. Peetu’s younger brother Petja Piiroinen won the Big Air Competition in Aspen recently.
Minna Nikkanen was the only Finn to reach the finals in the European Indoor Athletics Championships in Paris which ended March 6. And she did it in a big way. She ended up tied for 4th in the pole vault and in so doing set a new Finnish national women’s record of 460 centimeters. Not only that she broke her own Finnish record four times in these championships. In her best season so far, she set new records in all her qualifying jumps of 445, 450, and 455. A week before the Worlds she had set an earlier national indoor record of 443. Her outdoor
NR is 446 vaulted in 2009. Poland’s Anna Rogowska, 29, 2009 Summer World Champion at Berlin, won the gold at Paris with an NR of 485. Silke Spiegelburg of Germany was 2nd with 475 and her teammate Kristina Gadschiew was 3rd with 465. Tied with Nikkanen for 4th was Czech PV artist Jirina Ptacnikova with a 460 PB, as well.
Finnish light heavyweight Amin Asikainen’s boxing career ended when he was TKOed in the 11th round of a European Championship bout with Poland’s Piotr Wilczewski at Helsinki’s Hartwall Arena on March 5. A victory might have led the Finn to a world championship match. During his long career, Asikainen briefly held the European middleweight title which he took by defeating Germany’s Sebastian Sylvester in 2006, who defrocked him a year later in a rematch. Asikainen’s professional career included 28 wins and four defeats, the losses coming in the
past few years, several by knockout. He may take up a boxing trainer’s career now that he’s throwing in the towel. In a women’s prelim at Harttwall, Finland’s Eva Wahlström decisioned Britain’s Kristine Shergold in a tough battle to win her 5th pro bout as super featherweight. Jussi Koivula was unanimously voted the winner over Latvia’s Konstansins Sakaran for his 8th pro win without a loss.
– Harry Siitonen
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