MOTOR SPORTS Motorcycle * Rallying * The car like a tent * Making volts like an airplane * 1000 Lake Rallye * ICE HOCKEY Helsingin Jääkiekkoklubi * Buying a hockey team - Jokerit * Finnish championship *

MOTOR SPORTS   Motorcycle Tired of the long and exhausting hitchhiking legs in 1956 I got a 250cc Jawa motorcycle. It made the journey to the Alps and especially moving there from place to place much more convenient. A year later I could not escape from participating in some motorbike races like the International 3 Days' Trial. In spite of the name the race was not any trial, but true enduro. For me it was certainly not a success. The first night stage went without any error points. A great part of it I drove at the same time as the much older Walter Bergström, our idol in the Eläintarha road track races. The next morning it began to rain. I soon found out that I had to drive all the time as fast as I could. Our route followed small roads towards the North, not closed from general traffic. I remember well a small wooden bridge, which looked quite innocuous. So I arrived far too fast to it. Before I could do anything I was high in the air and then coming down the front wheel ahead. It was through sheer luck that I could manage to stay in the saddle and keep the bike going on. Later on I saw the delivery van of the Koneliike on the roadside of a small hill. They represented the Jawa bikes in Finland and were there to help the 'professional' Jawa drivers. I wanted to show them how a privateer could drive and zoomed up the hill. The men in their bright overalls waved with hands, and I thought they were encouraging me. Only too late did I realize that immediately after the hilltop the road curved strongly to the right. The bike skidded to the side of the road and into the ditch, and before that I was flying head first against the other side of the ditch. Probably I lost consciousness for a time, but then I was pulling the bike back to the road. The Koneliike guys came running to help me and saw the situation. They invited me to their service, gave something refreshing to drink and at the same time tried to straighten the distorted handlebar. Only when they found out that I had recovered a bit they let me continue the ride. At least ten spills followed, nasty experience falling in a deep water-puddle when traversing the Hyvikkälä swamp, some 20-km long. There were along the route-abandoned motorcycles and men drying their clothes on the tree branches. Walter had started before me, and here I saw him with bike pulled to the side of the route. After the third day only 12 drivers finished, I hope I would have been among them, but unfortunately or luckily I had to abandon earlier, quite wet, freezing and having a severe headache as the result of the big fall. In the autumn I happened to win a race, 'Syys 200', but after that came to my senses and sold the bike. When training and racing at least one limb was always hurt, and the alternate sweating and freezing when driving enduro was far from pleasant.   Rallying In the middle of the sixties I got a quite foolish idea to take part in a rally with my old VW-bubble. We finished the race but far among the back markers. As I had experience in car orientation my friends recommended me to a new promising talent in rally driving. His name was Pentti Airikkala, and he had not yet taken part in races. We were entered for a local competition, where many known drivers were participating. The start took place in the evening, and to make the conditions more demanding a thickening fog was veiling the narrow roads. I got the ride of my life in the old Volvo 544. Pentti had not raced before, but drive he could. The car flied between the thick trees and small houses on the twisting road. I hardly dared to breathe and had great difficulties in reading the map. After every stage we heard that our time had been fastest of all. We were leading the race with a clear margin. Our victory would have been sensational, but unfortunately the fifth stage was fatal for us. One hidden curve was tighter than it looked like, and into the ditch we went. The magnificent ride was over, but not the rally driving career of Pentti, which culminated many years later in the victory of the English RAC-rally. Next in the line was a new Morris Cooper S, which was prepared carefully for rallying. The premiere ended in a nocturnal wintery forest, the red beast bumping into a tree. Later on we took part in the Winter Rally during a very cold week-end. The heavily falling snow made the visibility poor. The first night we were driving northwards on a secondary road with some 120 km/h in the speedo. It was risky business we thought, as the light beams reached only for a shoirt distance in front of us. Then we heard a distant qrowl behind us, which became stronger and stronger, and then another red Cooper S whizzed past us like a cannon ball. We could see its red back lights for moment, but then they disappeared behind the snow veil. It was Timo M�kinen, the actual winner of that rally! In the special stages in the woods I lost the control several times, and each time the engine room got filled with snow. The heater could not compete with the situation, and we started to freeze horribly. Before the morning we called it quits and headed to a nearby service station, where we could melt the snow away from around the engine parts with a hot water hose. After a week or two I sold the car to a friend and thought that my career as a rally driver was over. Then the next autumn I bought an old ice track Morris Cooper S, which with its trimmed motor was quite a bomb. In the winter 1966 we won our class in the Forssa Rally and were 7th overall clocking within a second or two from the top times on several special stages.   Cooper S 1275 The car like a tent In the following Mänttä Rally we wanted to win, even if there were a young promising driver Hannu Mikkola participating. Two first stages went very well, we must have been very near to the top placing. On the third I put full gas on a clearing of woods, even if there seemed to be a small knoll in the midway. It was not small and then we flew and flew and flew and landed on the roadside the radiator grill first. There were snow enough so the car started rolling and in each roll the sides came nearer to us until we were pressed tightly together. All the windows flew out and all tools flew out to the field. At last the rolling stopped and were sitting pretty there almost on the road the front facing backwards to the direction where we were coming from. The car was like a tent. We collected our tools from the snow and started the car. Basically it was ok, only the superstructure was damaged, to put it mildly. We drove the wrack home in -20� C cold and had to stop every 30-km and run thirty times round the car to get a bit warmer.   Making volts like an airplane Next year we went to Mänttä Rally in order to rectify the error we had made. In the heart of the forest happened something I have not publicly told before. Now it is so long time ago I am not afraid of being labeled a liar. We drove down a narrow gently sloping icy road, having some 120 km per hour in the glass, when all of a sudden the left wheel seized in the snow on the roadside and the car started to fly and roll. It made a whole volt in the air. I remember when were facing upwards like an pair of astronauts and then the merry goes round ended and the wheels hit on the road again with a hard slam. Immediately I shifted to second gear and gave gas. And on we went as if nothing had happened; we had not lost much time. Only one thing was wrong: the front end of the car rose up and then went down, up and down. When we arrived at the time checking station we stopped and inspected the front end of the Cooper. Everything was in condition except the wheels and shock absorbers. The rims of both wheels were elliptic and the lower fastenings of the shock absorbers were broken. We did not try to explain the incident to the officials, but quitted the race and drove slowly towards home again. My co-driver during the VW- and Cooper-era was Kauko.   The author At that time we were racing with the so-called Group 2 cars. The tuning of the motor and the car itself was allowed with a large margin. We had faster cars, it is sure, but the costs of trimming were high, and the taking care of the car required lot of work. Why not compete with standard vehicles without doing any changes to them? It would be still very exciting in spite of the lesser speeds. I started asking questions and making suggestions to the officials of the Finnish Motor Sports Association. They were not at all interested in the beginning, but a stubborn activity from my part caused a change in their minds, and in the beginning of the next year the Group 1 cars were allowed to race in the local rallies. The success was immediate. 1000 Lake Rallye I changed the Cooper to a two-stroke Saab and became second in class in the Winter Rally, which was the most important snow rally in Finland at that time. The new Group 1 was not yet allowed in this race. Then came the announcement that Group 1 was along in the 1000 Lake International Rally. The tuning of the motor was forbidden and the car had to be quite like the cars you see normally on the roads. I had another Saab for this purpose, the four-stroke model 96. They were quite happy times competing with this vehicle. In 1970 we were second in our class in the 1000 Lake International Rally. Yet a much better achievement was obtained the preceding winter when we won the standard class overall in the Hyvinkään Sveitsi Winter Rally. My co-driver was during these years Antti and Timo. After six years of exciting pastime I got a bit tired with this activity. The preparing of the car between the races is quite demanding, as a private driver with a modest income you have to do as much as possible yourself and even so it is far from cheap.   ICE HOCKEY Jokerit ja Helsingin Jääkiekkoklubi Minnesota North Stars 1972 The boys wanted to play ice hockey, and a driver was needed. Soon also a coach was needed, and the driver became also a coach. It all began in 'Minnesota North Stars'. Yes, it was a suburb junior club in the so-called Canada-series of Jokerit. In the autumn 1974 I was asked to form a F-junior team (8 years) in the HJK (Helsingin Jääkiekkoklubi). As I did not have many candidates available except my own son Vesa and some others, I started calling the teachers and school caretakers of all lower grade schools in Helsinki. I requested if they had any wild 8 years old youngsters, who could skate a bit. Later a survey was organized in an ice hall, where some 100 eager and hopeful aspirants arrived. The skating abilities of most of them were not much to speak of, so it was quite easy to pick among them the needed 20 new team members. The season proved successful and I got the idea of organizing the Finnish championship tournament in the big ice hall. The sensation of the games was a distant team of Polar region, which consisted of only 7 boys and the coach. As I met them on the railway station, they did not have any equipment along. When asked about that the coach tapped his trouser pocket and answered 'Here in the wallet'. Our own team qualified to the final, where we met the local competitor. We lost the match with 7-1 and one boy who could dribble through our team as easily as if he had been of another planet made all those 7 goals. His name was Esa Tikkanen and a couple of years later he would be in our own team. In the spring we went to Moscow to play against the Russian junior teams. This was quite unheard of at those times, and they say it was the first time. I had studied the language and was ready to lead a 100-person group to the conquest of Moscow. We had another HJK team and all the parents along.   At the CSKA hall The connections to the capital of the neighboring country were so nonexistent, that when we arrived in the red city, officially they knew nothing about us. I had to arrange everything on the spot. We had negotiations in the red army ice hall, where I talked with my limping Russian with Ragulin, one of the chiefs of hockey there and with the head man of the Russian Ice Hockey Association in Moscow, which name I have forgotten. Ragulin and his comrades had different clothing than the usual street people, fur coats and so on. For the older team of 12 year old boys three matches could be arranged, against Spartak, CSKA and Dynamo, but for my own team they announced, that the CSKA did not have a team of so young boys. After long negotiations they arranged a training possibility for us. It took place the next day in a local out-of-doors rink. The weather was on the warm side and the ice quite soft. A heap of high hockey officials were gathered there when we skated on the melting ice. HJK boys in Kreml This show must have been positive to them, and afterwards the chiefs announced, that we could play against the youngest team of the CSKA, one year older than our own. Unlike their officials, the boys arrived in the hall in very rudimentary equipments, backpacks on their back. The skates were of some miserable local production as a clear contrast to the shining Bauer and CCM skates of our boys. But skate they could, and in the match we had not a chance against them, but lost with 12 to 2.   Buying a hockey team - Jokerit Besides being the coach of my team I had also a lot to do in the HJK as the executive manager and 'general secretary'. During the years 1975-80 we were the most successful junior club with 4 to 6 championships every year in the local Helsinki-Espoo-Vantaa area. Our bitter competitor was Jokerit as the HIFK was a lot weaker then. But at the end of the 70's we did not have an adult team at all. In 1979 I got mixed up with negotiations to buy a real adult hockey team, which played in the Finnish supreme league. And before the season's start we had signed the papers (Tapani Korpela, the president and me, the secretary and executive manager), which stated that the league team Jokerit was sold by Aimo Mäkinen to Jokeri-Klubin Tuki. That was an association of our HJK. So we had got a best of our arch rival. Our goal was achieved, we believed. During the first season I acted as the executive manager of the club. I had to take care of everything. Making contracts with the players, organize the matches, order all equipment, look for apartments to our two American players and so on. With the time we found out, that this was after all a team of Jokerit, not HJK, which was a disappointment to Tapani Korpela and myself. And, acting in a club of adult players was far from pleasant; so in order to be able to concentrate to the successful junior-team I resigned from that occupation before the spring.   Finnish championship In 1981 our C-junior team won the Finnish championship in two exciting games against Tappara of Tampere. Esa Tikkanen had been along with us during the last 3-4 years and was one of our best players. He made of ice hockey a successful career for himself and won 5 Stanley Cup Prizes in NHL! Other excellent players in our team were the strong Kari Tuiskula and Arto Taipola, who also finished playing in adult ice hockey series. A couple of years later I tried to continue as a junior coach with another young team. I can still remember quite an unusual experience: once arriving half an hour late at the training I expected the boys were hitting slap shots towards the end walls, which is quite normal in such circumstances. But it was not the case at all: in the rink there was a perfect order, the boys were training a scheme under the supervision of the team captain Kai Linna! Quite an achievement of a 12 year old boy. Later on he was one of the best members of the Finnish ice hockey team in the World championship 1998. In a tournament in Lahti we had a hard game against the local team. I can remember two promising young players we had to guard especially well. One of these was Jari Litmanen, who was later on excelling himself on another kind of playing ground. 2006 In the Finnish Hockey League championships in 2006 - somebody found out that the coaches of both final teams have been playing in HJK junior teams: Timo Lehkonen was the goal tender in my C-junior championship team of 1981 and Mika Ahola played in my HJK -71 team during two years.

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