Blog
Where I Am
I have a new webpage, so it seems worth laying out where things stand in July 2026.
I am currently ranked sixth in the world with 14.10 seconds. Third on the list is 13.99 and fourth is 14.00, which means I am about a tenth of a second from both fourth place and the podium. That is the scale my sport operates on. A tenth or two in either direction and I am in an even fight for a world championship bronze. I have been working on that gap for twenty years, and at 37 I am closer to it than I have ever been.
I opened my season in Switzerland with three races and the best result from that trip was 14.10s. The Finnish summer since then has been reasonable. I am still looking for a personal best. In all honesty, though, I have not been satisfied with the results I have raced in Finland. The season average is the best of my career so far, and I have usually been at my sharpest in August and September, so there is still a fair amount of season left to run and to improve.
I am currently second in the European rankings, which is part of why the absence of a European Championships this year is frustrating. There is no Europeans and no Worlds in 2026. The athlete ranked ahead of me in Europe is also second in the world, and a European final against him would have told me something genuinely useful about where I stand. Instead, every race this summer takes place with nobody paying much attention except me, my coach, and the ranking list. The year either builds something towards the next two years, or not.
I finished fifth at the World Championships in 2024 and seventh in 2025, and I do not receive the government coaching and training grant. The pot is finite and the criteria are what they are, but chasing the top does not get any easier for it. For the sake of openness, a season costs me somewhere around 20,000 euros. That is costs, not income. Racing chair, training camps, flights, physiotherapy, competition entries, equipment that constantly wears out and has to be replaced, and of course coaching. That figure does not include living, and living has to be paid for as well. Full-time athletics is a job that pays precariously and asks for everything. It is funded primarily by partners, by savings, and if you get lucky, by grants and system funding.
My plan from here is the World Championships in Tashkent in June 2027 and Los Angeles in 2028 to end the career. There is also the possibility that I stop after this season. It would be dishonest to present it as anything other than a possibility. If my situation stays as it is, I have to call it quits at the end of this year, for financial reasons above all. That in itself feels hilarious, when I am at the same time in the best shape of my life.
Alongside the racing, governance work is part of my life too. I chair the Athletes’ Commission of the Finnish Olympic Committee and hold board seats there and at Finnish Athletics. It is unpaid and it takes up time I could be selling elsewhere, but I hope it improves both my prospects after the career and Finnish sport itself.
If I stopped competing tomorrow, I would almost certainly be better at representing athletes. I would have more time, more energy, fewer conflicts of interest, and I could argue about athlete funding without quietly worrying about my own. I could be more critical still on grants, on Paralympic equality, and on the structural questions facing athletes, where there is no shortage of work.
And in doing so I would make Finnish sport slightly worse off, because there would be one fewer Finnish racer in a world final. Being most useful to athletes would require me to stop being one. I have not managed to resolve that contradiction, and I am not convinced a genuinely good solution even exists.
Last autumn, after the World Championships, I wrote a long reflection on the season, mostly for myself. I may even upload it here at some point. I finished 7th, 14.15, and I crossed the line and felt nothing at all. I ended the text by saying that the competitor in me was waking up again and I was going to let it happen. Nine months on, it is awake and was preparing for a Europeans that ended up not happening. Now it should remain awake for the rest of the season.
A tenth of a second, two seasons left in all likelihood, still training, still after the personal best. I do not know whether everything will work out. I do know what it would feel like to stop with the question still open, and I would rather not find out.
Photo: @Lightrayproduction