At the conclusion of the final race of the women’s World Cup season there are a lot of emotions. Joy for another good race. Exuberance for a season of accomplishments. Tears of both joy and sadness with retirements of beloved athletes and coaches. And in one case, tears of plain old sadness.
Suvi Minkkinen quietly finished her season with a 16th place finish. Ironically it was 1 position behind the woman she trailed in the Overall for much of the season, Lou Jeanmonnot. But while Lou Jeanmonnot was finishing with smiles, as she was about to lift the biggest trophy she won this season the Overall Crystal Globe, Suvi Minkkinen crossed with her head down. The emotions from the two women who held positions 1 & 2 in the Overall could not have been more different.
Minkkinen, after her stop in the athletes corral, made her regular and expected stop with Finnish media. Then she stepped into a corner of the Mixed Zone and just stayed there. At times others stopped to talk to her, most prominantly and for the longest were Polish head coach Tobias Torgersen, who is very close with Finnish leader Erik Kulstad, and then of course Kulstad himself. Throughout it all media coordinator Matilda Suhonen stayed right there.
Minkkinen waited for 5 minutes. 10 minutes. 15 minutes. Then she quickly made her way through the media mixed zone until the long North American media contingent stopped her. As soon as she stepped up to us you could see the redness around the eyes that only comes from tears. Clearly the end of the season had been a hard one for Minkkinen, and it’s easy to understand why. Early in the year she wore Yellow for a few days. She stayed in the #2 Overall position for much of the season including climbing within 50 points after the weekend in Oberhof. Late the season, even with a tremendous podium in Otepaa, the Oeberg sisters and Lisa Vittozzi surged by her pushing her down to 5th. It was still the best Overall finish of her career and 2nd in Finnish biathlon history only to the great Kaisa Makarainen. But still, to come that close was clearly painful for Minkkinen.
I had a series of questions lined up that I had been wanting to ask her for most of the season. In that moment though, seeing those red eyes, the flew out of my head. Instead of questions I really only had a message for her: Suvi, you won.
Look back to where Minkkinen’s career was before the last two remarkable seasons. As a consistent starter on the World Cup since the 2017-2018 season she had a total of 108 career non-relay starts up to that point. In that period she had 1 total top 10 and just 11 top 20’s. Her career best Overall finish was 27th in 2022-2023 when she had her one prior top 10. Minkkinen’s performance to that point had been defined by incredible shooting. She had hit less than 85% just two seasons in her career and starting in 2021-2022 has hit 90% or above every year.
With that level of shooting of course the skiing was what was holding her back. Her best average course time rank through her career was that 2022-2023 season when her average ski rank improved from usually being in the 50’s and 60s up to 44th. That season she ran 2.1% slower than median.
Those were the before times. Suvi Minkkinen knew that to reach her goals and the potential that was inside of her she had to make a change. So, at age 29 she took a gamble, and decided that she needed to spend more time training at altitude. The summer of 2024 she took herself and her camp to the Alps for large portions of the summer, financing it all on her own. The results have been night and day giving us a clear inflection point in the career of the new Finnish star.
Over two seasons since that change the numbers are relatively eye popping:
– 42 top 20’s
– 30 top 10’s
– 14 top 5’s
– 10 podiums
– 1 win
– Wore yellow bib for 2 races
– World Championship Sprint bronze medal
– Olympic Pursuit bronze medalist
– Overall finishes of 7th (24-25) and 5th (25-26)
Her skiing improvement was simply stunning. Over the last two seasons she has gone from being generally 2-2.5% slower than median to 1% and 1.4% faster than median. Her average course time rank improved to 24.5 in 24-25 and 21.2 in 25-26. She did all of this while not losing a single bit of her shooting. She hit 92.5% in 24-25, her career best, and 91.9% in 25-26 with perfectly even splits.
At the time that Minkkinen made these investments in herself she was fairly deep into career. Sure we are used to seeing some late bloomers. But this was on a different level. Let’s just put it bluntly: Suvi Minkkinen went form a solid if unspectacular biathlete to the 2nd best woman in Finnish biathlon history. And along the way she accomplished something that Kaisa Makarainen never did by bringing home an Olympic medal.
For somebody who is, admittedly, a fan of Minkkinen’s I’ve never gotten used to seeing her on the podium. Every time she climbs up there it’s like a dream sequence. Something that you could imagine but then there it is, really happening.
So after telling Suvi how amazed we were with her last two seasons I asked her, does it ever really get normal for her? She laughed and said “Every time I step up there I’m like ‘Oooh!’ It feels still a bit amazing.” Yeah, it feels pretty amazing for all of us to see you up there
You did it, Suvi. You changed the entire arc of your career. You blew the top off of the ceiling of your performance. You’re now one of the top athletes in this era of the biathlon World Cup. Fans from around the world know you as one of the athletes to watch week in and week out. More than that they cheer for you to earn those podiums. You etched your name into to the history of Finnish biathlon. You own an Olympic medal. You proved who you are not only as an athlete but as a person with your persistence and dedication. When you get a moment you’re going to take a look around you, and all that you accomplished, and you’re going to realize that yes, you won Suvi.