EVA RÖNKKÖ, née VÄLISTE, TELLS HER STORY
Orienteering: A Direction for Life
I was born in Tallinn, on September 17, 1968, in what was then Soviet Estonia. My family did not engage in sports or physical activities, but I took part in physical education at school. When my grandmother retired at the age of 62, she started orienteering and sometimes took me and my friends to the forest with her. I couldn’t read a map; we just followed her. Once at a fitness event, a young woman invited us to join orienteering training. She would become my future coach.
I started training at the age of 12 in the orienteering section of the sports club Dynamo Tallinn. We had training every day except on Friday; on weekends, there were competitions or long hikes. Training became a routine: after school, we always trained. We were a group of 10, and each training session lasted two to three hours. Numerous camps, competition trips in our club’s old bus, sleeping in tents at multi-day competitions, and running relays filled my youth. My group and coach became the most important people in my life. They are still my best friends.
Ski orienteering became my main sport. In October-November, we flew with our club’s skiers and ski coach Anatoli Šmigun (Kristina Šmigun’s father) to his hometown Zlatoust, beyond the Ural Mountains, for snow camps that lasted three to four weeks. I was invited to join a Soviet sports club Dynamo’s ski orienteering team. At 16, with minimal Russian language skills, I was the only woman from Estonia at Dynamo’s camps. The atmosphere at the camps was good, and I was well taken care of, especially by the Latvians.
At 16, I won the women’s main event in ski orienteering at the Estonian Championships. As a team, we once won bronze at the Soviet Union Ski Orienteering Championships. I participated in the 1992 Ski Orienteering World Championships in France as part of the independent Estonia’s national team. During the transition to independence, familiar coaching structures disintegrated, and resources diminished. Preparation for the World Championships was not at the level required for major competitions. I decided to end my competitive career.
Athletes in Soviet Estonia were privileged. There were paid professional coaches; my parents did not have to pay for my sports activities. Orienteering was not an Olympic sport, so practices related to doping were not applied to us. We didn’t have much equipment, but the club provided what was necessary. We didn’t know to want better, as we did not know what was available in other countries. I was satisfied and happy in my youth. Only after Estonia’s independence did I learn that my grandfather was sent to Siberia during the Soviet repression. We didn’t dare talk about it in our family at the time.
The Path to a Career in Physical Education
I studied to become a physical education teacher at the Tallinn University of Educational Sciences. I didn’t see myself as a teacher; I just wanted to be involved in sports and physical activity. Our teachers were former top Estonian athletes, such as shot putter Heino Lipp in athletics or kinesiology professor Rein Haljand in swimming. We received a solid foundation for our future work in physical education.
In my final year of studies in 1990, I got the opportunity for a student exchange at the University of Jyväskylä. Going beyond the border and to a university that educates future physical education professionals in Finland was more than I could have dreamed of, even though I had competed in Finland before. Going to the University of Jyväskylä felt like a unique opportunity, as I couldn’t imagine that Estonia would one day be independent and the border would disappear. I spent a month in Jyväskylä, reading everything related to orienteering in the library.
My Path to Finland
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, contacts between orienteers in Estonia and Finland increased. The Estonian Orienteering Federation organized a visit of our ski orienteering national team to the Finnish club Kalevan Rasti. We stayed with the orienteers’ families – I was in Tohmajärvi. During that trip, I met Finland’s first ski orienteering world champion, Olavi Svanberg. I continued corresponding with him and received valuable mental support from him as an athlete.
I often acted as an interpreter for Finnish teams during competitions in Estonia. Through these contacts, I was asked to coach the women’s team of Eurajoen Veikot. I got a work permit for two weeks at a time and frequently traveled across the Gulf of Finland in 1993. My approach to sports defined how I coached the women. However, Finnish society was different, and I encountered differences in sports cultures. I came from my own frame of reference and assumed things would work the same way. After one season, we amicably ended our cooperation.
Around the same time, I met a man from Finland in Tallinn. It was hard for me to imagine living anywhere other than Tallinn, but my feelings won, and I moved to Helsinki. I had strong faith in the future, as I was a physical education teacher and had already done coaching work in Finland.
The Reality of Being a Foreigner
In Finland, some of my classmates had their degrees recognized after reasonable additional studies and worked as physical education teachers in schools. My experience was different. I received an assessment from the University of Jyväskylä that my studies were insufficient. Additional studies and a new thesis were required. The requirement was too difficult. My assumed identity as a physical education professional crumbled.
I went to a work agency looking for any job. I ended up as a substitute water aerobics instructor for the City of Helsinki. I stayed on and eventually worked as a municipal physical activity instructor from 1995 to 2007. At the time, it felt like a dream job. I wouldn’t have known to look for such a job myself because I didn’t know that municipalities also organized physical activities.
Returning to Orienteering
I was very happy at the time. I had a permanent job and I was the mother of two wonderful children. I missed orienteering, but my work in physical activity fulfilled my need and longing for movement. I returned to orienteering only when my son, at the age of 11, said he wanted to orienteer. We found our orienteering home with the sports club Keravan Urheilijat. My son and I orienteered together for several years and also ran in the Jukola Relays. I still compete in ski orienteering. Last year (2024), our women’s team won bronze in the veteran category at the Finnish Championships. I am responsible for the adult orienteering school in our club.
My Eyes Were Opened
Initially in my work as a physical activity instructor, almost all the participants were native Finns. With the help of EU’s urban funding, the City of Helsinki’s sports coordinators began to focus also on residents with foreign backgrounds. Due to my language skills, I was offered a position as an instructor for immigrants. I took the job without much thought, as physical activity is physical activity. After six months, I realized that the work was different to my previous job. There was no turning back. The work was more meaningful, rewarding, but also more demanding than I had thought. I founded groups for women, taught swimming classes, supported men’s self-organized ball game groups, and organized physical activity events in neighborhoods. I also participated in the tolerance committee of the then central Finnish Sports Federation (Suomen Liikunta ja Urheilu, SLU). The committee had a great group back then and much understanding for people with foreign backgrounds.
When the City of Helsinki decided to end targeted instruction for people with foreign backgrounds, the ethical conflict grew too big for me. I resigned from the city job in 2007. There were also changes in the SLU. The tolerance committee was merged into the Fair Play committee. The space to discuss physical activity for people with foreign backgrounds diminished. The transformation of the SLU into VALO ended the committee’s work. When I followed these developments, I wondered why this was happening at the time when more and more people were moving to Finland. Our work was being dismantled on many fronts.
I moved to work at the Eläkeläiset [Pensioneers] association, where I have focused on elderly people with foreign backgrounds and developing physical activity where they can participate together with Finnish elderly people. My work in promoting physical activity for people with foreign backgrounds was recognized with the Piikkarit Award in 2013. In 2023, Eläkeläiset also received the Piikkarit Award.
Returning to School and the University of Jyväskylä
The desire to study still burned within me. In 2010, I found out about a unique 2-year program at the Häme University of Applied Sciences: “Vocational Teacher Education with a Focus on Multiculturalism.” For my final project, I wrote a pedagogical course plan for teaching physical education to immigrants in Finland. I initiated the training of instructors with foreign backgrounds at the Kisakeskus Sports Institute. Between 2010 and 2024, we conducted 14 courses, from which over 150 peer instructors in physical activity graduated. Many of those I trained now work as instructors in the field of physical activity.
My teacher at HAMK, Riitta Hämäläinen, praised my final project as well-written. She encouraged me to pursue doctoral studies. Her comments made me believe that I could continue my studies at the university. I requested a new evaluation of my studies from Tallinn University, and now my degree was comparable to a master’s level degree. The door to further university studies opened.
The questions I encountered at work sparked my interest in researching how foreign backgrounds affect participation in physical activity. Professor Hannu Itkonen of sports sociology embraced the theme. Under his guidance, my doctoral dissertation on women with foreign backgrounds in guided physical activity groups was completed alongside my day job in 2023. My research is the first doctoral dissertation to address the diversification of the Finnish population in the context of sports culture.
Door Openers
I have not experienced harassment due to my foreign background: as an Estonian, I am in a different position compared to the wonderful sports people I know who speak Russian, Arabic, or Somali. However, when I reflect on my achievements, they are the results of hard work where my foreign background has not been an advantage. Along the way, there have been many “door openers,” such as my teacher at HAMK, principal Mirja Papunen at Kisakeskus Sports Institute, my dissertation’s supervisors Hannu Itkonen and Kati Kauravaara, and editor-in-chief Jouko Kokkonen from the Liikunta & Tiede magazine. Without them and many others, I would not have been able to spread my wings.
What unites the “door openers” is that they have not treated me as an “immigrant” to be helped, but as a peer who also has something to offer. I have also encountered those who keep doors closed. Despite my experiences, the topics I offer about the diversity and inequality in the Finnish sports field often go unnoticed. I do not see this as a conscious exclusion, but more as a situation where there is no perceived need to seek understanding in a rapidly changing world. I did not see it either when I only coached those born in Finland. As long as those who have moved to Finland are absent from the leadership of clubs or sports federations, there will be no pressure in the sports field to recognize population changes and develop methods and skills to promote physical activity and support athletes and coaches from diverse backgrounds.
Eva Rönkkö’s interview
