A Couple of Exceptionally Important Matters

Good morning, dear readers. I have two extremely important things to share with you today.

The first important matter is an announcement. As you know, I have been writing a Finnish-language parallel blog, with content highly similar to this English-language one, although the posts have mostly been separate.

However, I have now decided that, moving forward, I will primarily write about topics related to Finland in Finnish and international topics in English. Of course, for good reason, I may still publish the same articles in both languages or, for example, write about domestic politics in English if I find it appropriate. However, as a general rule, I will follow the approach I just described.

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My second important matter concerns the recently uncovered cheating by Norwegian ski jumpers. This is significant because Norway has long been both a true superpower in winter sports and a nation with an unblemished reputation. This was especially true after the Finnish cross-country team was caught using doping a couple of decades ago.

However, the recently exposed ski jumping suit fraud demonstrates that Norwegians are not inherently any cleaner than anyone else. It also reinforces my belief that their cross-country skiers used banned substances to enhance their performance in the early 2000s, just like many others did.

That being said, this does not mean that the Norwegian athletes did not deserve the flood of medals their male skiers claimed at the World Championships in Trondheim, which concluded yesterday. Nor does it diminish the achievements of Johannes Klæbo, the dominant skier of this era.

Of course, one can always speculate that the winner of the interval-start race in the classic technique would most likely have been Iivo Niskanen—had he been able to compete in the World Championships. Unfortunately for us Finns, medals at major competitions are awarded among those who participate, and in that field, Klæbo was superior to everyone else every single time. That was truly amazing!

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Preview of the Trondheim World Ski Championships
The Relationship Between the Professor and Teemu Selänne