Hanna-Maria Seppälä

Hanna-Maria Seppälä
Hanna-Maria Seppälä at the European Swimming Championships 2008 in Eindhoven
Personal information
Surname:	Hanna-Maria Seppälä
Nation:	Finland
Swimming style (s) :	Freestyle, layers, butterfly
Birthday:	December 13, 1984
Place of birth:	Kerava
Size:	1.73 m
Weight:	60 kg
Medal table

Hanna-Maria Seppälä (born December 13, 1984 in Kerava ) is a Finnish swimmer .

Career

She has specialized in the short freestyle and medley courses . Her greatest success so far was the world title in the 100 m freestyle at the 2003 World Swimming Championships .

Hanna-Maria Seppälä began swimming at the age of five at Club Keravan Uimarit , for which she still competes today. The main trigger for this was her older brothers who played the same sport. She was appointed to the Finnish junior national team for the first time in autumn 1995. In January 1999 she set her first Finnish record in the 50 m freestyle. In the same year she was able to win her first medal at the European Junior Championships. A year later, she won the 50m and 100m freestyle titles at the same event. Since then she has started in the senior sector.

At the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 , she was the youngest starter in Finland, but did not get past an 18th place. The first successes at World and European Championships were still a long time coming. Between 2000 and 2003 she often made it to the finals, but not to the medal ranks. That should change at the 2003 World Swimming Championships. In the 100 m freestyle she surprisingly won the gold medal in 54.37 seconds. In the same year she also won a bronze medal at the 2003 European Short Course Championships . 2004 shouldn't be her year. At the Olympic Games she disappointed with a 12th place on her gold course. But then things should go uphill again. At the European Short Course Championships in 2005 she won gold over 100 m individual medley and silver over 100 m freestyle. The following spring she won silver over 100 m medley at the short course world championship in Shanghai and at the short course European championship in autumn she was able to defend her title over this distance.

So far, Hanna-Maria Seppälä has won 86 Finnish championship titles and swam 66 national records (29 on the long course and 37 on the short course). Her fans often just call her Hans, which is a combination of first and last name.

Web links

• Website of Hanna-Maria Seppälä ( Memento from May 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
• Hanna-Maria Seppälä in the Swimrankings.net database (English)
• Hanna-Maria Seppälä in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )