Nickname: Quide Date of birth: 23rd February 1978 Residence: Vuokatti / Jyväskylä Hobbies: skiing, running, playing volleyball, cycling, music (90° and my own music)
Interview (15.12.2016)
Do you have a nickname?
Yeah, Quide.
Where does it come from?
I don't know... I made it myself. I had another nickname, I didn't like it and I made a new one. And I was forcing everyone to use it. Now it's ok.
Where you an athlete before you became a coach?
Yeah. I had a long career, maybe 20 years... no, 15 years in COC and World Cup. Mostly in COC.
What was your best result?
In COC I won a few times, had a few podiums. I was third in the overall ranking one season. In World Cup my best was a fifth place. In SGP I was third. And a bronze medal from the team competition at Olympic Winter Games 2006 in Turin. At WSC in 2005 I was fifth in the individual – 2 seconds behind the bronze medal... and 4 seconds behind the podium...
Why did you become a coach?
After my career I thoungt that I wanted to do something totally different because I hadn't been doing anything else. I wanted to see the normal life, I wanted to study and go to normal work from 8a.m. to 4p.m., having the weekends off. So I was doing this for ten months and then I was done! I already had a nice career coming in this normal work, I was moving forward. They liked me and I had a good job and a future there but I decided to go to Vuokatti to coach. They called me because they heard I had been thinking about this and I made a fast decision. The next day I went to work and said "I'm out of here". One month later I was already in Vuokatti and now it's 7 and a half years. It was a good decision!
So you're still enjoying it?
Yeah, yeah! It was not my... that other thing - it was ok but it was all the same, every day and every week. And I think this [being a coach] is like... I feel kind of lucky that I can do this. No need to think about any other things at the moment. Of course it's sometimes hard and no luxury all the time but mostly it's a good thing. I enjoy this life very much!
What do you like most about your job?
Hmm... I like to work with young athletes. It's possible to effect the most in them for their career. You can teach them more, they're more eager to learn new things and you can build a training culture, stuff like that. It's a long project and a long way but it's nice to see when someone is going up to the World Cup. So that's the main point but of course it's nice to just be with the youngsters, to train with them and spend time with them, trying to form their future. Somehow, it's the best part of the job. You can get a very good feedback from them when you see them learn something and going for it, getting better results. And I get along very well with the young guys. I'm also mentally very young! I think if I see my old classmates... they are a little bit different. I don't know which is the better way but they seem to be older, even if they are the same age. When you work with young guys it's not possible to get older!
What was your biggest success / best moment as a coach? Is there anything that sticks out?
Hmm yeah, I think it's Ilkka Herola's silver medal at the Junior World Championships when he was 16 years old. That was a nice moment and it was not expected at all. So that was the first time all the work we started in 2010 paid back. And since I started working with him in 2008 or even earlier, personally for me it was a very nice moment. And it was the first time we had success with the new system after those really bad times.