Samppa Lajunen

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Samppa Lajunen Nordic combination
Full name Samppa Kalevi Lajunen
nation FinlandFinland Finland
birthday April 23, 1979
place of birth Turku
size 177 cm
Weight 65 kg
Career
society Jyväskylän Hiihtoseura
Trainer Tommi Nikunen
National squad since 1995
status resigned
End of career March 6, 2004
Medal table
Olympic medals 3 × gold 2 × silver 0 × bronze
World Cup medals 1 × gold 4 × silver 3 × bronze
JWM medals 2 × gold 1 × silver 0 × bronze
Olympic rings winter Olympics
silver Nagano 1998 Season
silver Nagano 1998 Gundersen
gold Salt Lake City 2002 Gundersen
gold Salt Lake City 2002 Season
gold Salt Lake City 2002 sprint
FIS Nordic World Ski Championships
silver Trondheim 1997 Season
silver Ramsau 1999 Gundersen
gold Ramsau 1999 Season
silver Lahti 2001 Gundersen
bronze Lahti 2001 Season
silver Lahti 2001 sprint
bronze Val di Fiemme 2003 Gundersen
bronze Val di Fiemme 2003 Season
FIS Nordic Junior Ski World Championships
silver St. Moritz 1998 Gundersen
gold St. Moritz 1998 Season
gold Saalfelden 1999 Gundersen
Placements in the World Cup
 Debut in the World Cup 0March 8, 1996
 World Cup victories (individual) 20 ( details )
 World Cup victories (team) 03 ( details )
 Overall World Cup 01. ( 1996/97 , 1999/00 )
 Sprint World Cup 02. ( 2001/02 , 2003/04 )
 Podium placements 1. 2. 3.
 singles 10 14th 7th
 sprint 10 7th 2
 Mass start 0 2 2
 team 3 2 0
Placements in the Grand Prix
 Debut in the Grand Prix August 26, 2000
 Grand Prix victories (individual) 02 ( details )
 Overall rating 01. ( 2001 )
 Podium placements 1. 2. 3.
 singles 2 2 0
last change: April 13, 2019

Samppa Kalevi Lajunen (born April 23, 1979 in Turku ) is a former Finnish Nordic combined skier .

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Lajunen was one of the most successful combiners in the world. His greatest success was the maximum possible triple success at the 2002 Winter Olympics , where he triumphed both in the Gundersen method and in the sprint and with the relay. He was also world champion with the 1999 season as well as two junior world champions. With his 20 World Cup victories, he is on roughly the same level as Felix Gottwald , Ronny Ackermann and Bjarte Engen Vik . He also won the overall World Cup in 1996/97 and 1999/00 .

Career

The way to the top of the world (1995–1999)

Lajunen already competed in his first cross-country skiing race at the age of two . A little later, at the age of five, he ran almost 500 kilometers on skis, and at the age of nine he started ski jumping , so that he now mastered both Nordic combined sports. His first international start dates back to December 1995 when he took part in the B World Cup for the first time . There he reached the podium in his first competition in Ramsau as second behind the then 18-year-old Ronny Ackermann . A week later he won this class for the first time in Rovaniemi . After these successes, the 16-year-old made his debut in the A World Cup in March 1996 , where he was eleventh right from the start. From the 1996/97 season , the Finnish Association consistently used its young talent in the World Cup. Lajunen continued to show his skills by winning two World Cup races that winter and thus the overall World Cup. With one exception, he always placed in the top ten this season, and he also won the silver medal at the 1997 Nordic World Ski Championships with the relay . The Finn explained his increasing performance compared to the previous season with the fact that he “got a year older” and so “jumps better and runs much better”. He was also not dissatisfied with the comparatively weak 17th place in the individual at the World Cup, since his goal was to "do the best possible".

In the following winter of 1997/98 , Lajunen started straight away with a win - his first in the sprint with just one jump and a 7.5 km cross-country ski run. After that, however, his performance fell somewhat, until the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano he did not achieve another World Cup podium. Instead, he won the team at the Junior World Championship and won the silver medal there in the Gundersen competition. So he traveled to Japan, where he first won silver with the team around Jari Mantila , Tapio Nurmela , Hannu Manninen and himself, more than a minute behind the victorious Norwegians. The Finn also won this medal in singles, where he had to give way to double Olympic champion Bjarte Engen Vik . Even after the Olympics he was unable to achieve a top 3 result in the World Cup, so he was far from defending the overall World Cup victory and fell back to eighth place, more than 800 points behind Vik. As in the previous year, the new 1998/99 season started successfully for Lajunen; within the first four races he took the podium three times. He also won the Chaux-Neuve World Cup right before the major events of the season . At the Junior World Championships in February 1999 in Saalfelden , he succeeded in winning, which meant his first major international individual title. Two weeks later, at the 1999 World Ski Championships , the Finn won with the team, and he also won the silver medal in the Gundersen competition. In the sprint, which was held for the first time, he placed fifth. After the World Cup he won another World Cup race, the fifth victory of his career, but in the overall World Cup he was more than 1000 points behind Bjarte Engen Vik, who triumphed there for the second time in a row, in fifth place.

Triple Olympic victory and end of career (1999-2004)

With a strong run of ten first and second places in a row - including five triumphs - Lajunen opened the 1999/00 season dominantly, but Vik also made it onto the podium eight times in a row. With one exception, when he finished 26th in Sapporo after two bad jumps and an even worse run, he finished all season competitions in the top four and consequently became overall World Cup winner for the second time, almost 200 points ahead of Vik. With eight season World Cup victories, the Finn increased his account to a total of 13 triumphs. At the Summer Grand Prix 2000 he also proved his favorite position for the coming winter 2000/01 with a win . However, contrary to expectations, this began with little success for Lajunen, who initially only had to be satisfied with a 12th and a 19th place in Kuopio . After these teething problems, he got back into shape by the World Championships in February, but still remained without a World Cup victory. In Lahti , during the Nordic World Ski Championships 2001 , the Finn won two silver medals in Gundersen and Sprint as well as bronze in the relay. As before the season highlight, he remained without another World Cup victory after the World Cup, so that he was only fifth in the overall World Cup, this time he had to admit defeat to the three-year-old Austrian Felix Gottwald .

The 2001/02 Olympic Winter World Cup began quite successfully for Lajunen. Nevertheless, it was only enough to win one, his 14th World Cup , before the 2002 Winter Olympics . For the Olympics, however, the Finn was in top form in time; the Olympic competitions began with a clear double victory by Lajunen and his compatriot Jaakko Tallus in the individual, after the latter had lost Lajunen almost a minute after the jumps. In the relay, too, the Finns beat all competitors, although Germany was only beaten by just under eight seconds. With that, Lajunen had already set the record of his opponent Bjarte Engen Vik, who in 1998 was the only Nordic combined athlete to achieve two victories at the same Olympic Games. Since the 2002 sprint was part of the Olympic program for the first time, the Finn now had the chance to become Olympic champion for the third time, something that until then only the German Ulrich Wehling had achieved. After one jump, Lajunen had 15 seconds ahead of his toughest pursuer, the German Ronny Ackermann . On the route, he moved further away from Ackermann, who, thanks to a strong last lap, ran up to nine seconds on the winner, but could no longer endanger Lajunen's third Olympic victory. Thus, with five medals, he also took the lead in the list of Olympic champions in Nordic combined before Wehling. The very good shape of Olympia was also preserved in the World Cup, where he won the three competitions that followed the games (all ahead of Ronny Ackermann) and thus moved up close to the two overall leaders Ackermann and Felix Gottwald. He did not displace this, however, so that he placed third in the overall World Cup. In the Sprint World Cup, which was rated for the second time, the Finn even came second behind the German overall World Cup winner.

After a mixed summer Grand Prix without a podium, Lajunen also started the World Cup 2002/03 - without a podium result. It wasn't until mid-December in Harrachov that World Cup victory followed, and in the sprint of Ramsau he triumphed for the nineteenth time. At the World Ski Championships in 2003 he won two bronze medals in the individual and with the relay, in the sprint he was eighth. The season ended with little success, but thanks to his two victories before the World Cup, he was fifth in the overall World Cup for the third time. The 2003/04 season began well for Lajunen , in which he finished on the podium several times at the beginning. In January he celebrated his 20th World Cup success in Nayoro . Since he achieved further good results, he finished third in the overall World Cup in the first victory of his compatriot and upcoming World Cup dominator, Hannu Manninen . On March 6, 2004, the Finn finished his successful career in Lahti with a third place. Lajunen's example of ending his career very early - the triple Olympic champion was not even 25 years old - was followed in the next few years by other athletes such as the Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe and the Belgian tennis player Justine Henin-Hardenne .

His long-time coach Tommi Nikunen also became known through Lajunen's successes and switched from Nordic combined to ski jumpers, where he inherited Mika Kojonkoski , who had moved to Norway .

successes

World Cup victories in individual

Lajunen's 20 individual World Cup victories are evenly distributed between the two main disciplines; He triumphed ten times in both the sprint and the Gundersen competition. He was only able to win three times in Lahti, and in total he won five times in his home country Finland. Only once did he win both competitions at a World Cup weekend, namely at the beginning of March 2002 in Lahti.

No. date place discipline
01. January 5, 1997 GermanyGermany Schonach Gundersen
02. January 14, 1997 ItalyItaly Val di Fiemme Gundersen
03. November 28, 1997 FinlandFinland Rovaniemi sprint
04th January 30, 1999 FranceFrance Chaux-Neuve Gundersen
05. March 6, 1999 FinlandFinland Lahti Gundersen
06th December 11, 1999 FinlandFinland Vuokatti sprint
07th December 21, 1999 United StatesUnited States Steamboat Springs sprint
08th. January 3, 2000 GermanyGermany Oberwiesenthal sprint
09. January 11, 2000 ItalyItaly Val di Fiemme Gundersen
10. January 16, 2000 AustriaAustria Breitenwang sprint
11. February 8, 2000 JapanJapan Nozawa Onsen sprint
12. February 26, 2000 FranceFrance Chaux-Neuve Gundersen
13. March 17, 2000 SwitzerlandSwitzerland St. Moritz Gundersen
14th December 9, 2001 SlovakiaSlovakia Štrbské Pleso sprint
15th March 1, 2002 FinlandFinland Lahti Gundersen
16. March 3, 2002 FinlandFinland Lahti sprint
17th March 13, 2002 NorwayNorway Trondheim sprint
18th December 14, 2002 Czech RepublicCzech Republic Harrachov Gundersen
19th January 8, 2003 AustriaAustria Ramsau sprint
20th January 23, 2004 JapanJapan Nayoro Gundersen

World Cup victories in the team

No. date place discipline
01. January 21, 2001 United StatesUnited States Park City Relay (mass start) 1
02. January 9, 2002 ItalyItaly Val di Fiemme Season 2
03. February 14, 2004 GermanyGermany Oberstdorf Season 1

2With Jaakko Tallus and Mikko Keskinarkaus .

Individual Grand Prix victories

No. date place discipline
1. August 30, 2000 GermanyGermany Oberstdorf Gundersen
2. August 24, 2001 GermanyGermany Klingenthal Gundersen

statistics

Placements at the Olympic Winter Games Olympic rings without rims.svg

Year and place competition
Gundersen NH Sprint LH team
JapanJapan 1998 Nagano 2. - 2.
United StatesUnited States 2002 Salt Lake City 1. 1. 1.

Placements at world championships

Year and place competition
Gundersen NH sprint team
NorwayNorway 1997 Trondheim - - 2.
AustriaAustria 1999 Ramsau 2. 5. 1.
FinlandFinland 2001 Lahti 2. 2. 3.
ItalyItaly 2003 Pragelato 3. 8th. 3.

World Cup overall placements

season space Points
1995/96 36. 0219
1996/97 01. 1223
1997/98 08th. 0665
1998/99 05. 0986
1999/00 01. 2175
2000/01 05. 1010
2001/02 03. 1863
2002/03 05. 0629
2003/04 03. 1058

Grand Prix placements

season space Points
2000 02. 0352
2001 01. 0524
2002 10. 0139

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Athlete profile: Samppa Lajunen ( Memento from May 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) from February 3, 1998 on CNN
  2. Sapporo, 12./13. February 2000 Gundersen (K 90/15 km) on the side of the FIS
  3. Ackermann wins silver on spiegel.de
  4. Christina Fritz: Nordic Combined Final - Lahti March 6, 2004 ( Memento of the original from August 26, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on sportforum24.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sportforum24.de