Harri's blog

Here you can read the lates stories from Harri's journeys

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We had the last competition of this season in Suomu, Finnish Championships. After a week and a half of good training in Ruka I drove to Kemijärvi (my original home) and prepared for the last competition of this season. I was there with my family.

I started training on Friday, one day before the event. Course was very soft so it was nice to ski. Actually it was the same course than it was in the world cup event in December. Of course its form was very different, because temperature was -20 – -25C back then and now it’s about +5C and raining.

Skiing was good; I was able to use my new skiing technique so I could ski faster and easier. I just had some minor problems with the first jump because I landed over the landing against the first bump. I had some hilarious take-offs from that… After the training I had some pain in my knees and in my back, No wonder after those landings.

Saturday: Moguls.
It was the first mogul competition day, trainings were good and I felt confident. This time men series started the competition, so the landings would be better without any big holes. Those holes form when the youngest skiers start to make their turns in the landing. That’s why the first bumps become huge. It was a good decision; we can do bigger jumps ;) Competition started and it was my turn to ski. I did clean and fast run in the qualification, no big mistakes and jumps were good. I was first. I did the fastest time, so my trainings have made a nice difference. In the finals I did a good run too, I did fastest time again (0,8 seconds faster than in the qualification), but with that speed I did few mistakes in the middle section of the course and in the second landing, I dropped down to a second place by the minimum margin of 0,03 points… Juuso Lahtela was the winner. I was happy about my runs and the fast times I did in both competitions, I was almost 1.5 seconds faster than Juuso. But my target was to win Finnish Championships in the men series for the second time. Second place wasn’t my goal so I was left with a hunger; I decided to win the next event, the dual moguls.

Sunday: Dual moguls.
For the dual moguls I had a speed advantage, because I did the fastest times in the earlier event. Again I felt confident and knew my strengths in speed. Trainings weren’t too good; I had huge pain in my shins. Old stress injury came back and jumping felt extremely painful. I think that occurred because I did too big jumps from the first jump during the trainings – landing against the bump did bad trick to my shins. After the last training run I thought I could not ski the competition because I landed back flip against the first bump and that hit devitalized my legs for some time. I had to put my shins into the snow to kill the pain.

After some difficulties it was time for the competition, qualification was normal single moguls and final was the dual. My qualification didn’t felt too good because my mind was thinking only the pain I felt. I think I missed something because I won the qualification and wondered how that happened ;) It was a good thing, because I was able choose the line I ski in the dual. My first opponent was Tarmo Perälä. We had nice dual run, but I was a bit embarrassed because of my second jump. I had some problems just before it and I choose not to do it but a basic jump. Even thou I did horrible second jump. Second opponent was Janne Salonen, I won him too. I secured my place in top two and I was one run closer to my goal, just one run left. Last run, I was going to ski against Jussi Penttala. That Run went nicely; I did really fast start and I had a good lead after the first jump and kept up the speed until the course become steeper. I had a good lead so I was able to slow down a bit and to avoid stupid mistakes in the harder part of the course. My tactic worked fine, I finished first and judges decide that I’m the winner  I reached my goal I won gold! It was my first gold in the men series of dual moguls.

I was really happy about this weekend, two medals; silver and gold. Now I know that my training has paid the effort. I just wish I could have learnt that earlier, or my coach could tell that to me… I can thank Tapio Luusua (team member) for the advice he gave to me. I just checked the world cup results from Suomu; my time in world cup was 24,1 and now my fastest time was 22,0. That’s quite a difference! Of course the shape of this course is different now but over two second difference in time is huge. Training in Ruka paid it’s effort.

I went to Helsinki for few days to do some work, meet my business partners ( Uudenmaan Kehyskulma and X-Print ) and did some work too. I had a flight to Kuusamo on Sunday 18th of April, due to the ash clouds of that famous volcano in Iceland all flights were cancelled. Very sorry that so many people are stuck around the world. I’m lucky because I have the chance to take a train and bus to go to there. I will go to Ruka for some training and then I have a class meeting. I will meet my class mates after very long time, that’s going to be fun!

Sometimes you just don’t know why all happens in the contrary of what you’ve planned and believed at. This year is a example of that, trainings season was really good and everything developed a lot. I was happy and confident before the world cup season, there was no kind of instability in my skiing and I set my goals a big higher than in the previous seasons. But, when the world cup season started, it started with a totally wrong legs! I didn’t achieve any good results, just bad runs and many totally failed ones. The whole world cup season was like that.. Just two times in the 19th place and that’s not what I’m aiming for. Well as I described that the season didn’t go as planned, I loose my Olympic spot and rest of the season was bad. Competition season has been weird for one another reason too, I’ve been sick total of ten weeks. Some cough, flu and rhinitis… I don’t understand how I was sick all the time, maybe I was stressed or something…

There was some good competitions, I won one european cup competition and was fift in other earlier ec competition.

Another good thing is that I learned some great things about my skiing and I hope I can develop those ideas to my skiing later ;) Now I’m heading to Ruka and Pyhätunturi for some training and then to Finnish nationals in Suomu. I have some good ideas to develop my skiing and everything around it, now it’s the time to do that, not that sick anymore…

After too long time I finally updated my blog. There is some reasons why I decided not to write to here for some time. So many things I was unsure about, didn’t know what happens next…

After the world cup in Lake Placid I had to heal my sore loin, then I needed some time to forget the disappointment for not getting my place in the olympics. I needed my time to figure all things out and to get my motivation back, then I headed to north of Finland to do some work and then some skiing. I also had great time with my falmilies and did take lots of photographs of real Finnish winter.

I was working in Ivalo with my father-in-law, after our work was done we did go for some day trip to North Norway to see the fjords. I took lot of good pictures and you can see some of them in here.

After our journey I went to my original home in Tapionniemi for some skiing and photography, weather was really good and I had good time there. After few days I went to Kuusamo for some more skiing and training. I had very good luck with the photography, because I witnessed two amazing aurora borealis shows. It was the best show I’ve been able to capture! I was really excited about the pics I got and you can see some of them in my artgallery.

At my second last day in Kuusamo I did go for some more photoshooting to capture the beauty of the winter. I also did some mogul trainings in Ruka during the time I was in Kuusamo, skiing was good and I chose to ski the european cup in Himos in the weekend. I flyed from Kuusamo to Helsinki and continued to Jyväskylä by car.

In the next day it was the competition day and it turn out very nicely, I won my first european cup (you can read more about that in the news section)! I was asked to be a judge and a model in the photography happening that was held in the next day at Häkärinne. It was very nice day and perfect end for the great weekend.

I headed back to home, some resting, some trainings and some work. I’ve done some nice things for my photography firm and have some good plans to be done after the season ;) You can see quite large update to my photography site later in this spring when everything is ready to be published.

No go to Japan,
I was surprised that I wasn’t going to Japan to the next world cup event for some reason… But good thing is that I was able to go to Åre!

Åre,
At the moment I’m in Åre, after some long boat and car trip we arrived to here in Monday. First training day went ok, just some minor problems but easily fixable ;) Course is very nice, a bit tricky but not too hard….

Second training day was a lot better and I was able to fix those tiny broblems and I’m feeling confident for the upcoming competitions.

Course has been very soft because the temperature has been really warm, but during the night before the competition temperature dropped way below zero and snow froze. Course was expected to be very hard but I like it that way anyway. The competition didn’t go so well, I did ok run but I got really bad points. I did a mistake in the second landing and my time wasn’t good enough. Second competition was in Saturday and course was a little more harder, I was going to ski faster, more agressively to make into the finals. Well no, I landed my first jump back weight and I wasn’t able to get back up, I had lot of difficulties in the middle section of the course, I loosed the control and runt out.

I just can’t describe how bad it felt to fail the last two world cups of this season, it doesn’t help that I’ve failed every other world cups in this year too! I loose my spot from the Olympics, that spot I’ve been reaching for the whole time I’ve skied.

Well, my skiing has gone forward a lot and so is my jumps, not to forget that I won my first european cup. Those are the few positive things I can found from this season… But I learned a great thing after the competitions in Åre, Tapio told me why I can’t ski faster and why I feel bad if I try to ski fast. Answer is really simple, but needs a lot of training to achieve. The way I ski now is extremely active, I do way more work than many of the skiers in world cup. Almost every other skier is skiing more like passive than me, thats why they can ski faster and keep the control. They doesn’t do that much of work while skiing, they just stand on the center of the skis and let the bumps to push the legs up, they ski more in the center of the line too. I do way too much of work, because I foretell every bumbs by flexing my legs up just before the bump and then pushing legs out right after the bump. Then I curve my skis too far from the center line. With that style my skiing looks good and aggressive, but I just can’t ski as fast as I should.

If you ski three to four bumps per second with my style you have to be extremely fast! Let say your speed is four bumps per second, you have 0,25 seconds between two bumps. After the first bump you have 0,125 sec. to straighten your legs, change the pressure to the outer ski, lean your knees inside of the turn, then another 0,125 sec. to ski towards the next bump and bend down and go over it while keeping your body position same. No wonder why I feel like my brains comes few bumps behind my body ;)

What Tapio told, gave me a lot of new ideas and motivation for skiing and training. My coach hasn’t been able to tell me those few facts and I haven’t thought it neither, but now I believe I can develop my skiing a lot if I find a way use that idea in my skiing. It’s not going to be easy but it gives me a lot new motivation.

Last week I’ve spent doing something else than skiing, just resting and healing my sore loin. It has been two weeks since I crashed in Lake Placid and my loin is still painful. Doctor said it should be good after 7-10 days?

Overall the last two weeks has been quite awkward for me, first I crashed in the trainings, I ignored the pain fought myself back on skis on the next day. Our spokesperson made a bulletin that I was injured and I could not ski the competition, but I did ski and that info nor any details about my conditions were ever published, even I wrote a statement about what really happened.

My coach didn’t give any value for the effort that I did to ski the competition! In the next day he told me that I’m not going to the Olympics and won’t be able to come to the finishing training camp after this trip. I was really disappointed of everything, final decision should came after one week from Finnish Olympic committee and I already now that I’m not in the team and I can’t go for training camp neither. It’s just impossible to describe that feeling when your main goal has been taken from you hands just before it would come true. I acquired that Olympic spot for Finland, for ME, but it was given to Mikko Ronkainen. He quit skiing few years back and now in this season he did a come-back and took my place with his old results… These 2010 Olympics has been my target since I started skiing, my biggest dream in freestyle, after all those difficulties I still kept my place in Olympic ranking… All that hard training and fighting through all those obstacles was ignored in one final decision.

I have a allowance place for the Olympics, if someone gets hurt. But the reality is this, if someone would get hurt I would not make in time to Vancouver. Distance is so long, straight flight would take 20-30 hours and I would have to adapt to a nine hour time difference in very short time. And if there would be any flights that wouldn’t be booked full. It would be a bit tight schedule…

During this hard time I find out something very, very nice! I have amazing fans!!! Fans support was super nice and kept my faith in this. Without fans support I would probably have had a long break, before continuing… It’s great feeling to know that there is many people supporting! There was a poll in the mtv3.fi site and I was amazed when I saw that 55% of people wanted me to go to Olympics than Mikko (30%). There was about 100 comments cheering up me… I will never forget that, thank you so much to all of you who supported me!! My family has supported me a lot too and that’s what I’ve needed, everything will change to a brighter direction I believe…

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