I’ve got reindeer and jingle bells dancing in my head. Jolly people singing. Snow. It either means I’m thinking about Christmas…or Finland. In this case, with the holiday season here it could be both! But right now, we’re going to focus on Finland! (I’ve been writing these for I don’t know how long straight now and I’m getting a little loony…can you tell?). When I think about Finland and biathlon of course the first thing that comes to mind (or person as the case may be) is Kaisa Makarainen with 27 wins, 85 podiums, and 6 World Championship medals, and 3 overall Crystal Globes. Not just the best Finnish biathlete ever but one of the greatest of all time.
After that, though, I think of Kontiolahti, which is possibly the most charming venue on the World Cup. At least that’s the way it comes across on television. A warm arena full of fans that are of course pulling for their home Finns, but also more than happy to cheer for all the athletes. It doesn’t seem to matter if you’re one of the top contenders, or simply an athlete fighting through another tough day, the Finnish fans are there to embrace you.
And after that, I think of the Finnish wax techs who are just awesome. Here’s a shot of them cheering on Otto Invenius. You can’t see it but the gentleman in red was in a dead sprint cheering on his man. They are not only good at their job but also just really fun to watch out on the course!
Now our job is to figure out what we think about the 2023-2024 edition of Team Finland!
Women
Quota: 5 Athletes to Start
World Cup
Suvi Minkkinen (28)
Last season Suvi Minkkinen was one of the breakthrough stories of the season. Prior to last year she had five World Cup seasons and a best Overall finish of 43rd. Her career best prior to last season was 18th. She went on to smash those numbers. She ended up 27th Overall for the season, and set a new career best of 8th in the Individual at the World Championships. She had six top 20’s and 15 top 30’s in 23 races both of which absolutely crushed her previous career bests. She had seven of her nine best races of her career. It was, in every respect, a career best season.
She did it primarily with good shooting. This isn’t terribly surprising for her as she has been a good shooter in the past including ranking 7th in overall shooting in 2021-2022. The key for Minkkinen, though, was that as she repeated her shooting feat, she also added a measure of ski speed for the first time in her career. After spending most of her career ranking over 100 in overall skiing, last year she got all the way up to 65th. 65th means that she was still 1.5% slower than average. However, its a HUGE jump from where she was. And when you are hitting 90.8% of your shots you can make it work. She also sliced 2 seconds per shooting off of her shooting time.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 86.7 | 83.3 | 85 | 29.2 |
| 2018-2019 | 95 | 81.7 | 88.3 | 28 |
| 2019-2020 | 81.3 | 76.3 | 78.8 | 29.2 |
| 2020-2021 | 86.2 | 81.5 | 83.8 | 28.4 |
| 2021-2022 | 94.4 | 89.6 | 92 | 29.1 |
| 2022-2023 | 90 | 91.6 | 90.8 | 27.1 |
There is only one thing for Minkkinen to focus on for continued improvement. More speed. Of course there is a balance because she doesn’t want to sacrifice her super power shooting for just a small amount of additional speed. But for Minkkinen to go from 27th Overall to maybe…top 20…she’ll need to at least make it to World Cup average speed. There just isn’t much more to say than that. It’s a case of, very simple to see what needs to be done, and very difficult to make it happen. Let me say though, that outside of Finland, Minkkinen will have few bigger fans than me!
Erika Janka (28)
As the season kicks off in Oestersund this week Erika Janka will be entering her fourth season on the World Cup. Thus far she is still searching for her breakthrough similar to the one that Suvi Minkkinen experienced last season. She has thus far missed out on scoring her first points on the World Cup, a major goal for her this season I am sure. However, even though she hasn’t yet scored a point, it doesn’t mean that she hasn’t seen improvements. Last year she had four of the five best finishes of her career, including her career best 45 in the Oslo Sprint to close out her season.
Janka is, so far in her career, a slightly better shooter than a skier. You might guess though, since she is still looking for her first top 40, that she isn’t super strong at both. Last year she finished ranking 71st overall in skiing with an average course time rank of 69th and running about 3-4% slower than average. She finished ranked 49th overall in shooting hitting 84% of her shots. This was actually her best shooting of her career, just a couple of points better than her performance in 20-21 and 21-22. Interestingly she does shoot significantly better prone than standing. Her shooting times area also middle of the road at 30 seconds per shooting which was 54th on tour last season.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2020-2021 | 91.4 | 72.9 | 82.1 | 33.9 |
| 2021-2022 | 94.3 | 68.6 | 81.4 | 32.4 |
| 2022-2023 | 90.7 | 77.3 | 84 | 30 |
Looking for how Janka can make a Minkkinen-like breakthrough there are two obvious candidates. She could improve her skiing and move a little closer to average speed. Minkkinen for example was still skiing about 1% slower than the average World Cupper so that might be an attainable goal. Also improving the standing shooting from her usual spot in the 70’s to maybe the mid 80’s would be huge. It would get her overall shooting into the upper 80’s. Either, or preferably both, of those improvements would at the very least dramatically improve the odds that Janka could score her first points of her career this season. Definitely a goal to shoot for!
Venla Lehtonen (28)
Venla Lehtonen, like Erika Janka, is still in pursuit of her big breakthrough moment. She did score a point last season as she finished 40th at the Kontiolahti Sprint. That was actually the 2nd best finish of her career. In total last year she had two of the best six races of her career. So not quite a breakthrough but it was still a solid season for Lehtonen. I’m sure for Lehtonen and Janka though, watching Minkkinen have her moments last season just fanned their own fires for a breakthrough.
Lehtonen and Janka are quite similar as athletes. Where Janka finished 71st overall in skiing Lehtonen finished 76th. Lehtonen did have the advantage in shooting though, as she hit 85% overall vs. Janka’s 84% overall. It’s actually amazing how close their statistics were. Actually the biggest gap was in shooting seed where Janka was 2.5 seconds faster than Lehtonen’s 32.5 second average shooting time.
For Lehtonen you can basically copy and paste what we wrote for Janka. In fact maybe I did…did you notice? She could improve her skiing and move a little closer to average speed. Minkkinen for example was still skiing about 1% slower than the average World Cupper so that might be an attainable goal. Also improving the standing shooting from her usual spot in the 70’s to maybe the mid 80’s would be huge. It would get her overall shooting into the upper 80’s. Either, or preferably both, of those improvements would at the very least dramatically improve Lehtonen’s performance for this season!
Next Up:
Noora Kaisa Keranen (22)
Noora Kaisa Keranen has spent the last couple of seasons getting some run on both the Junior level and the IBU Cup. Her racing on the Junior level over the last five seasons has primarily been limited to Youth/Junior World and European championships. In the last two seasons she has really started to come into her own. Over that span of 11 races, again all of which occurred at Junior European Championships and Junior Worlds, she score six top 10’s (and three 11th place finishes!). So basically all but two races she was right in the top 10 mix. Her worst race of the bunch was a 30th in the Sprint at Junior Worlds last season, but she bounced back finishing 15th in the Pursuit and 10th best isolated pursuit time.
Keranen is a shooter, plain and simple. She has hit 90% in each of her last two Juniors seasons. In 21-22 when she raced a little on the IBU Cup she hit 86.4%. In general on all levels she usually hits a bit more on the prone shooting than standing shooting. Sometimes 10-20% better prone. Skiing for Keranen isn’t terrible, but it’s nowhere near as strong as her shooting. She was 68th in skiing on the Juniors level last season and usually finished with course time ranks in the 20-30s. One intriguing factor for Keranen is she is a relatively fast shooter at this point in her career. She averaged 29.7 seconds last season which was actually a little slower than she has been shooting.
For Keranen, just like with Lehtonen and Janka above her, the key is about improving the skiing. She clearly shoots well enough. She shoots on a Suvi Minkkinen level. And if she can do that a Minkkinen level career is possible. If she can bring the ski speed along like Minkkinen has then there is definitely the possibility of a top 30 World Cup level season in her future. While I don’t expect that in 2023-2024, I am quite hopeful that we’ll see her skiing take a solid step forward this year. Even if she moves to the World Cup and doesn’t have great success in terms of overall finishes I think her performance will improve. After that we’ll aim for World Cup success.
Sonja Leinamo (21)
Young Sonja Leinamo entered IBU biathlon during the 2020-2021 season and almost immediately started getting time on both the Junior Cup and the IBU Cup. Last season, even at age 21, she split time almost perfectly equally between the two levels. So far on the Juniors side she’s been finishing usually from the 20’s to the 40’s. Last year, racing Junior European Champs and Junior Worlds she had her most consistent finishes with four of her six finishes from 19th (her best ever) to 31st. These weren’t blowing anybody away, but it was good consistency. Last season she also had 13 races on the IBU Cup and finished with a couple of 23rd place finishes which were good enough for the best of her career. Most of her finishes though were in the 40s to 60s with an average finish of exactly 50th.
Leinamo is the exactly opposite of Keranen. Leinamo makes up all of her time on the course as she has been a good skier on the Juniors level, ranking 26th in overall skiing last season. However her shooting is a little shakier hitting between 62% and 67.5% each of the last three years on both Junior and IBU Cup levels. This makes Leinamo’s goal pretty simple, improve the shooting. The skiing is already good enough that if it continues to develop as it should she’ll be able to compete. It’s all about having that shooting come along. She doesn’t need to shoot like Keranen or Minkkinen. She just needs to get to the low to mid 80’s and she’s going to see her finishes really improve rapidly. Hopefully she’s picked up a few tips from her teammates this offseason!
Nenna Lukkarinen (22)
Nenna Lukkarinen has a fairly limited racing history to evaluate over the last two seasons. She has run eight IBU Cup races, including just three last year, as well as just three Juniors races, the Junior Worlds in 2021. There are no real major results that stand out at this point. She seems to be a pretty good shooter hitting just over 87% each of the last two seasons. Skiing meanwhile has been significantly slower than average. So if we are going to continue seeing Lukkarinen racing we’ll hopefully see at least a moderate jump in her skiing ability. The shooting is there. If the skiing comes along, and she gets a little more racing under her feet, hopefully we’ll see a nice year.
Emilia Irvankoski (21)
Emilia Irvanokoski is another young Finnish woman with a limited racing history. In 2021-2022 she ran six Junior Cup races and two IBU Cup races followed by three Juniors races and eight IBU Cup races last year. She had the best two finishes of her career, both 22nd, at the Junior European Championships last season in the Sprint and the Pursuit. Otherwise her racing history is less remarkable. She is like Lukkarinen in that she is a bit limited on the skis, with an average course time rank of 59th on the IBU Cup last season. But fortunately she also has pretty good shooting hitting 83.6% last year. Just like with Lukkarinen we’ll hopefully see at least a moderate jump in her skiing ability. The shooting is there. If the skiing comes along, and she gets a little more racing under her feet, hopefully we’ll see a nice year.
Heidi Kuutinen (25)
While Heidi Kuutinen certainly has more racing history than her two teammates immediately ahead of her on this list, she doesn’t seem to have a ton more success in her results. She’s really only raced one season in full on the IBU Cup, the 2021-2022 season when she ran 15 races. The other few surrounding seasons she starts between 5-7 races including 7 last year. Her career best finish on the IBU Cup is 29th but she’s normally finishing between 40th and 60th. Her average finishes over the last few seasons have been 52nd, 51st, 59th, and 57th. Her statistical performance is fairly average. She is a little slower than average, finishing 121st overall in skiing on the IBU Cup. She shoots usually in the upper 70’s. Hopefully this season we see some advancement in both of those categories.
Juniors:
Inka Haemaelaeinen (17)
Inka Haemaelaeinen is just 17 years old but she’s already raced the Youth Worlds on three separate occasions. Compared to some of her Finnish teammates that an absolute surplus of racing experience. Being so young compared to some of her competitors it perhaps isn’t surprising that her career best thus far is just 22nd at the Soldier Hollow Youth World Individual. Last season her best finish was 24th in the Sprint at Youth Worlds. Also not surprisingly, her skiing seems to be on the improvement. It is slightly improving each season and last year her course time ranks were 17th, 14th, and 10th, the best of her career. She finished moderately faster than average and ranked 33rd overall in skiing. Her shooting is a work in progress. In the last three seasons her shooting has been 64%, 72%, and 62%. For the 17 year old to see continued improvement in her racing we’ll hope that her shooting makes a nice jump this season. If she can be shooting in the mid to high 70’s, which isn’t incredible, it would be tremendous. That plus her skiing, which should hopefully continue to evolve, will make her a competitor for her first top 10 this season!
Teodora Westerlund (19)
19 year old Teodora Westerlund made her IBU debut last season at the Youth World Championships. Her first race was the Individual when she grabbed 9th place. There are plenty of her teammates who didn’t have a top 10 in the Juniors and yet Westerlund did it on her very first race. She followed that up with a solid 20th in the Sprint and 27th in the Pursuit. Her skiing was okay with course time ranks in the 30s, but her shooting was very good hitting 95%, 80% and 65% over those three races. We will hopefully get a better feel for Westerlund this season if she races a little more.
Iiris Helander (20)
Just like her teammate Westerlund, Iiris Helander made her Junior Cup debut in the 2022-2023 season. Interestingly though, she actually made her IBU Cup debut a little earlier in the season and held her own, finishing 66th or 88 in the Sprint and 54th in the Mass 60. At Junior Worlds she finished 28th, 57th, and 43rd. She skied with a course time rank in the mid 30’s and shot 80%, 65%, and 85% in her three races. We’ll get more of a feel for her performance as she continues to race this season!
Seela Peuralahti (22)
Seela Peuralahti made her return to IBU racing this past year, after first racing two races at Junior Worlds in 2021. This past year she ran all three Junior Worlds races, placing 32nd in the Individual and 46th in the Sprint and Pursuit. This past year her course time ranks were in the 40’s and 50’s and she shot 85%, 90%, and 75%. Hopefully her skiing comes along this season as we see her racing more.
Saga Hurskainen (18)
18 year old Saga Hurskainen made her debut on the IBU stage last season and raced all three Junior Worlds races. She finished 55th, 44th, and 49th. She shot 80% in each race and had course time ranks in the 50’s. Hopefully that skiing comes along as she continues to race this season!
Men
The men find themselves in an interesting position. They came into last season with Tero Seppala looking like the clear leader. He had a little regression last year. However a number of men took steps forward. It closed the gap on Seppala a little bit but also raised the floor of the whole team. There is a reason for some excitement going into this year!
Quota: 5 Athletes to Start
World Cup
These three man are probably the leaders of the team and likely won’t be off of the World Cup at any point. Every time they are healthy I would expect to see them lining up at the start.
Tero Seppala (27)
Two seasons ago, Tero Seppala and his green rifle raced their way into my heart with an equally beautiful and surprising run to a 12th Overall finish. While his skiing maintained it’s very good level, he brought his shooting out of the 70’s and into the low 80’s overall and that was enough for a major breakthrough. Last season, though, wasn’t quite as much fun. After five top 10’s in 2021-2022, including two top 5’s, he had just three last season. He also had a fairly big drop in top 20’s from 14 to 8. In the middle of the season he also missed two weeks in Pokljuka and Ruhpolding. At the end of the day, the small decrease in shooting along with missing out on several races, resulted in a year in Overall finish of 29th.
As intimated above, Seppala saw a little slipping in his performance pretty much everywhere. His skiing, always the stronger of his characteristics, maintained it’s strength last season. The ski rank was up a single place from 19th overall to 18th and correspondingly he was a little faster vs. the field moving from just under 2% faster than average to just a little more than 2% faster than average.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 80 | 71.7 | 75.9 | 31.8 |
| 2018-2019 | 80.8 | 72.5 | 76.7 | 31.8 |
| 2019-2020 | 79.2 | 74.6 | 76.9 | 28.2 |
| 2020-2021 | 83.1 | 76.3 | 79.7 | 29.6 |
| 2021-2022 | 88 | 78 | 83 | 28.4 |
| 2022-2023 | 84.8 | 78.6 | 81.7 | 26.7 |
His shooting which was so instrumental in his breakthrough 22-23 season, breaching the 80% barrier for the first time ever, took a small step backwards. He moved from 83% overall down to 81.7%. It was really a drop in the prone shooting that hurt him. This occurred as he made a concerted effort to shoot faster, moving his average shooting time all the way down to 26.7 seconds. That’s an almost 5 second improvement over the last five years.
Will Tero Seppala return to the edges of top 10 Overall competition this year? That’s a really difficult question to answer. His skiing is just as strong as ever, but as we’ve mentioned many times already, it’s all about the shooting. The last two seasons were the first of his career, at any IBU level, that he hit above 80% of his targets. I guess we’ll see if he can do that again. The most likely source of that improvement would be his prone shooting boosting back up again. I’m hopeful that is exactly what we will see. If the shooting bumps back up, and he has a full season of health, then a top 15 Overall season is definitely in reach.
Olli Hiidensalo (32)
Even at age 31, last season wasn’t too late for Olli Hiidensalo to have a career best season as he raced to a 30th Overall finish. It was a great year by every measure. He had 14 top 30’s after having just 12 in his entire career before then. He also matched a career best with three top 20’s. And he tied his career best race with an 11th place finish in the Kontiolahti Individual.
Hiidensalo also had his best season in both skiing and shooting. He ended the year ranked 40th in skiing and 38th in shooting. The skiing by the numbers was actually just marginally better than his previous career best which he set all the way back in 2021-2022. His shooting though was a more significant career best. He hit 84.6% of his shots last season, besting his best in 2018-2019 of 82.9%. He did all this while also making a big jump in his shooting speeds averaging 27.4 seconds per shooting, an improvement of three seconds over his prior career best.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 89.6 | 71.3 | 80.4 | 30.8 |
| 2018-2019 | 87.1 | 78.8 | 82.9 | 31.4 |
| 2019-2020 | 87.5 | 61.3 | 74.4 | 30.7 |
| 2020-2021 | 80 | 65 | 72.5 | 32 |
| 2021-2022 | 84.2 | 77.5 | 80.8 | 31.8 |
| 2022-2023 | 89.1 | 80 | 84.6 | 27.4 |
Will Hiidensalo repeat this career year again in 2023-2024? Whenever an athlete has a career best this late in their careers it feels like it might be an outlier. However it wasn’t like, outside of shooting speed, Hiidensalo was that much better this year than his prior career bests. It’s just that he happened to do them all at the same time. Maybe this has to do with the new coaching staff that came in before last season? I won’t go so far as to say that he absolutely will do it again, but I suspect we’re going to see a very strong year.
Tuomas Harjula (25)
Prior to last season Tuomas Harjula was off the radar. Well maybe not off everybody’s radar but certainly off my radar. He was so far off that I didn’t even include him on last year’s version of this exercise. You certainly couldn’t do that this season! After finishing with 0 points in 2021-2022, good for 104th Overall, he soared up to 41st Overall last year. Along the way he had three top 20’s including his career best finish of 10th in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Mass Start.
Harjula actually had a fairly successful debut World Cup campaign in 2020-2021 finishing 62nd Overall. If you compare last year to that season it actually looks like a more appropriate progression for a 25 year old and not as dramatic of a leap. Looking at those two side by side you see his skiing moved from 75th overall in 20-21 to 60th. That looks like a move from 1.5% slower than average to 0.5% slower. Definitely a step forward. Meanwhile his shooting was actually a touch down, going from 87% in 20-21 to 83.5% in 22-23. That 83.5% is actually pretty much in line with the rest of his shooting in his career. His shooting times were down about 2 seconds in that time as well.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2020-2021 | 87.8 | 86.1 | 86.9 | 29.1 |
| 2021-2022 | 86 | 78 | 82 | 28 |
| 2022-2023 | 89.6 | 77.4 | 83.5 | 27 |
Taking out the unfortunate 21-22 season last season looks like a solid step forward for a young biathlete. There is every reason to believe that this upcoming year could be another improvement. Could we see him move to just slightly faster than average this year? That would take him to about 40th in the ski rankings. That seems doable. Meanwhile his shooting, maybe not all the way back to 87%, but what about 85%? That combination would be similar, but with slightly better shooting, to Sean Doherty who last season finished 32nd Overall (41st ranked skiing and hitting 82.7%). I think it’s fair to say that a successful year for Harjula would be aiming for top 30 in the Overall. Would that be three for Finland in the top 30?
World Cup/IBU Cup In Between
Otto Invenius (22)
Looking to the future of Finnish biathlon, Otto Invenius is one of the potential bright stars of the future. Just in the two years ago, in the 2021-2022 season he finished 5th Overall on the Junior Cup. That season he had four top five finish in six races including three silver medals, two at the Junior European Champs and the silver in the Sprint at Junior Worlds. He also finished 5th in the Individual at Junior Worlds.
With that obvious bright future it’s not hard to see why he’s been getting starts on the IBU Cup since as early as the 18-19 season and the World Cup starting in 21-22. After, appropriately, taking his lumps to start his IBU Cup career, last year was a definite step forward. He ended up with three top 20 finishes on the IBU Cup last season. In his World Cup run last year, which was basically the end of the season, he score three top 25’s including a career best 12th in the Oslo Sprint.
Otto is a very skier so far in his career. In his last season on Juniors he was top 10 in course time in every race. Last year on the IBU Cup he was top 28 in course time every single race. And in his end of season World Cup racing he had five of his last six races with a course time rank of 27th or better. He’s still just 22. That’s a good indication of where he could go over the next several years.
The difficulty will be bringing along the shooting. At no point in his career has he been a strong skier. His best ever shooting season was 82% as a Junior in 21-22. However the rest of his career has been around the mid 70’s including 76.7% on the World Cup last year. This includes shooting times in the low to mid 30’s as well.
Otto Invenius has the potential to be a future leader of the Finnish squad. If he can follow the model of Tero Seppala and improve the shooting while his skiing continues to develop along the current trajectory he actually has a chance of landing in the same zone. Seriously, take a look. Just compare the two of them from last year’s statistics. Last season Invenius was ranked 32nd overall in skiing with a 76.7% shooting percentage. That is almost exactly where Seppala was five seasons ago in his own 22 year old season. That year Seppala ranked 40th in skiing and shot 76.7%. We already covered where Seppala has since ended up. So to me it doesn’t seem totally inconceivable that Invenius could follow the same path to success.
Jaako Ranta (26)
Jaako Ranta is just 26 so there is plenty of time left in his career for growth. However, thus far we haven’t seen significant improvement as we might hope. He has flipped back and forth between the IBU Cup and the World Cup over the last five seasons without having massive success at either level. However, taking the optimistic view of things, 2021-2022 was definitely his best season on the IBU Cup and in 2022-2023 he didn’t race a single race on the IBU Cup, solely racing on the World Cup. While 22-23 wasn’t full of high finishes for Ranta, he did for the most part cut out the bad finishes. It was all about consistency. He ran 15 races all totaled and even though he had a season’s best of just 48th, he only finished outside the top 60 just twice.
Ranta showed some solid skills with the rifle last season. He finished up hitting 83.3% of his shots. That’s actually about where he has been for the last several seasons on both the World Cup and the IBU Cup. It’s really about his skis. The skiing hasn’t been all that great at any point in his career. Even as a Junior he only ran a little faster than average, which doesn’t usually translate well to the World Cup. Last season he ended up ranked 84th overall in skiing which was his best in a full World Cup year. Considering just a few seasons ago he finished 155th overall in skiing its a pretty good improvement!
So if you look at the just the results for Ranta it doesn’t look that impressive. Howevere there has certainly been a bit of an upward tail the last few seasons. It’s really nice to see. He’s just 25 and I’m sincerely hoping that we’ll continue to see that upward trend, especially in his skiing, over the next season. If he can keep improving the skis he may be able start grabbing a little more attention this season.
Heikki Laitinen (29)
Just two years ago, at age 27, Heikki Laitinen made his way to the World Cup full time. Since then he hasn’t nearly had the same success that we’ve seen some of his teammates have over that span. Instead, since the 2022 Winter Olympics, a bit like Jaako Ranta, he has had a relatively high floor, but also a relatively low ceiling. He’s had a lot of finishes in the 40-60 range including five finishes between 47th and 49th (the low ceiling), but just four finishes below 60th (the high floor).
Laitinen is a bit different than Ranta in how he does it though. He has only been shooting in the low to mid 70s, including hitting 75.8% last year. That was actually up from 71.1% the year prior. Breaking it down further he actually is a really good prone shooter, with a solid 91.7% prone hit rate last year. The standing shooting though was a mere 60%. The skiing though is actually fairly decent coming in at 58th overall last season.
So what we want to see from Laininen is obviously different, and yet the same, as for Ranta. Instead of improved skiing we want to see the shooting, particularly the standing shooting, get a touch better. With his skiing in the mid 50’s it’s not like we’re expecting him to suddenly be in the top 10. However, he could break through his ceiling in the 40’s and get his first top 40 finish as long as he could get that sorted out. That’s the one thing I’ll be watching for him this season.
Arttu Heikkinen (19)
We mentioned Otto Invenius as potential part of the future of Finnish biathlon, and another part of that future could come from Arttu Heikkinen. Over the last two seasons on the Junior Cup he has 10 races all at Youth or Junior Worlds as well as Junior European Championships. In those 10 races he has 7 top 10’s. That includes a win and three total podiums all at Youth Worlds. He’s also made 12 starts on the IBU Cup over the last two seasons and has another three top 10’s and six top 15’s there. So far it’s been a really solid start to his career!
Heikkinen so far has run pretty fast on the skis including finishing 18th overall in skiing as a Junior last season and 28th on the IBU Cup. And that’s just as an 18 year old. His shooting actually isn’t terrible either. Over the last two seasons on the Junior Cup he has hit 86.3% and 82.5% of his shots respectively. On the IBU Cup last season he shot 82%. And his shooting times are pretty good too, averaging about 30 seconds per shooting already.
So far Arttu Heikkinen looks like he is on the path towards becoming a great biathlete. It’s a long way to project, but if he continues to improve, following his current trajectory, he has the making of another top 15 or even top 10 Overall biathlete on the World Cup. He already shoots just as well if not better than Tero Seppala. He’s skiing faster than Seppala did at this age. I am exceptionally optimistic about his future. It’s going to be hard to be patient and allow him the space and time to develop. For this next season I would love to see him continue to get faster, his 84% or higher, and maybe shoot faster than 30 seconds. If he can do that the results will take care of themselves.
Joni Mustonen (29)
Joni Mustonen is 29 years old so you might expect that he, like many of his contemporaries, has about a decade of racing in IBU level races. You would be wrong. He only started racing in the 2018-2019 season, so this last year was just his fifth year of IBU biathlon racing. It’s not that he was an FIS cross country professional, he just took a journey into international competition that took a little longer than others have. So if you look at it not as a traditional 29 year old, but rather somebody in his fifth season of racing, then his rise over the last three seasons begins to look more like what you might expect. In that time he’s seen his Overall ranking on the IBU Cup move up from 97th three seasons ago to 37th last year.
Last season’s 37th Overall finish included eight top 30’s, easily surpassing his career total of four prior to last season. He also scored two more top 20’s and his first career top 10, an 8th place Sprint in Pokljuka. Then he didn’t race the last two weekends of the season, so it is possible that had he raced in Canmore he would have accumulated enough points to reach the top 30 in the Overall, as he was just 23 points back.
Mustonen profiles as a significantly better skier than shooter. Last season he ranked 16th overall on the IBU Cup in skiing and averaged over 5% faster than the average IBU Cup male biathlete. Unfortunately his shooting, at just 71.7% ranked just 89th on the IBU Cup. That 71.7%, though, was by far the best of his career. In fact just three seasons prior he shot an abysmal 51%. Last season’s shooting surge was powered by his prone shooting reaching an actually fairly solid 81.7%.
If you see a 29 year old finishing 37th on the IBU Cup you’re probably thinking he’s maxed out his potential. I don’t believe that is the case at all with Mustonen. He continues to improve every season both in skiing and shooting. He’s actually become quite a powerful skier, ranking highly on the IBU Cup. The shooting is also making dramatic improvements. If he can bring the standing shooting along and find his in the high 70’s this season it would really open some doors for him. We saw just this past season, in a full field event, he finished 8th in a Sprint. He’s got the ski speed, so more consistent shooting is the only thing holding him back. I really think it’s coming this year. Will he ever be a solid World Cup biathlete? Only time will tell, but we can’t expect a traditional timeline from him.
Jonni Mukkala (22)
Unfortunately due to their first names and both last names starting with “M” I will always confuse Mustonen and Jonni Mukkala. I can’t tell you how many times just doing the research for this I got them mixed up in my own head. Hopefully I have it straight here!
Jonni Mukkala is significantly younger at just 29 years old, and is still finding his way both in the Juniors and the IBU Cup. Last season though, he was only on the IBU Cup and he ran 12 races with a mix of success. He ended the year ranked 58th Overall which doesn’t sound great. But in the midst of the season he did have some good races including an 8th place Super Sprint in Pokljuka and a 17th place Sprint in Obertilliach. Those two finishes were not just the best finishes of his IBU Cup career, but better than anything he had previously done as a Junior as well.
Mukkala is similar to Mustonen in another way as well, he is also a stronger skier right now than a shooter. He finished last season ranked 33rd overall in skiing on the IBU Cup, running about 4% faster than the average IBU Cup male on the course. With the rifle he wasn’t bad though, as he hit 75% total (with both 75% for standing and prone), good enough for 73rd overall. He also managed to drop his shooting time average from 37.5 seconds to 33 seconds.
Mukkala does appear to have a decent amount of skiing talent. He’s made significant gains in that area as well. Hopefully we’ll see that continue to grow. The shooting will eventually need to improve as well. I’m not sure that needs to be this season. While it would be nice to see, he’s still only 22 so plenty of time. I would really like to see that skiing make another solid leap though. That appears to be his area of greatest potential and I would love to see it get consolidated as a true strength. Hopefully we see that with maybe a touch better shooting.
Juniors
While the Finnish team has plenty of young men scattered throughout the roster, these guys down here are the guys I expect to focus mostly on the Juniors right now. Based on the history of other Finns they will probably each get a little IBU Cup experience as well but it is the Juniors racing I’ll be watching.
Ville-Valtteri Karvinen (21)
Speaking of guys getting IBU Cup racing Ville-Valtteri Karvinen actually got as much IBU Cup racing last season as he did Juniors. Interestingly, he didn’t really do much better against Juniors competition than he did against the IBU Cuppers. He did have a 13th in the Individual at the Junior European Championships, but the rest of his finishes were in the 30s-40s. Meanwhile on the IBU Cup, outside of a 74th place finish he was finishing in the 30s-50s.
Looking at his statistics Karvinen is one of those jack of all trades, but master of none type biathletes. On the Juniors level his skiing ranked 84th and his shooting of 75.7% ranked 87th overall. On the IBU Cup his skiing ranked 94th, and his 83.3% hit rate ranked 35th. However considering he raced just four Juniors races and five IBU Cup races it’s hard to analyze too much. Let’s see what he looks like after another year likely focusing on the IBU Cup.
Eemi Naumanen (19)
After a really good showing at the 2021 Youth Worlds in Soldier Hollow where Eemi Naumanen finished 14th, 15th, and 6th, I thought Naumanen may be one to watch this past season. Well that didn’t quite turn out to be the case as he wasn’t able to replicate that performance. His best finishes on the year were 25th and 23rd in the Sprint/Pursuit at Youth Worlds. The key to that magical Soldier Hollow week was great shooting. He hit 88% that week. The rest of the time he’s hit 72% which appears to be more of his baseline. And he doesn’t nearly ski fast enough to make up for that. However, he does ski fast enough that when he hits he can compete. Let’s just see both of those aspects improve again this season. Maybe he won’t hit 88% again this year, but if he skis even faster he won’t have to do that to have similar results.
Jimi Klemettinen (18)
18 year old Jimi Klemettinen made his IBU debut last season at Youth Worlds where he finished 39th, 32nd, and 42nd. He obviously didn’t knock anybody’s socks off but it was his first racing. Let’s just hope we see more and better racing this winter.
Kalle Loukkaanhuhta (20)
Selfishly I hope Kalle Loukkaanhuhta never makes the World Cup because I don’t want to try to pronounce that on the World Cup. (Hey, go put that on your bulletin board and make the World Cup just to stick it to me!). After racing twice in 2020-2021 he skipped 21-22 and came back this past season running at the Junior European and Junior World Champs. In that six race stretch he somehow had two finishes of 47th and another of 46th. It defies the odds a little bit. Those were his best races of the season. For Loukkaanhuhta 2023-2024 will hopefully be a year of big growth!
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