Prize giving ceremonies

It’s December and there are no more races but only few celebrations and prize givings to wrap up 2010. Some time ago I was invited at Erkki Poutanen’s 60 year party. Erkki is the mastermind behind Endurospecial.com website and he’s the one who has followed the overall world championship since F.I.M. quit the official overall championship some years ago. Juha Salminen was the last rider to get the official F.I.M. overall world title back in 2006. So F.I.M. stopped giving the official title but it doesn’t mean nobody is following the overall. It’s like a reality check for winning riders in three different categories to check who really is the fastest. I do it all the time. If I win E2 I want to see how many riders in E1 and E3 were faster than me. Sometimes none and sometimes it’s surprising to see how fast some rider has been on a smaller or bigger bike. Erkki has a looong background as a sport journalist for newspaper Keski-Uusimaa and he understands the need for overall championship and sportive aspect of it. I received the Endurospecial.com overall world champion’s diploma from Erkki, his son Mika and their web master Toni for third time. I have been the best rider over all three classes in the world championship also in 2007 and 2009. Cheers Erkki and happy retirement days from full time journalist’s work!

Returning to Helsinki from Milan after indoor Genova I had to rush to another prize giving. The famous Finnish motorsport media Ruutulippu published an illustrated yearbook wrapping up the Finnish motorsport season and nominating the Finnish motorsport athlete of the 2010. I got honoured for the second time by Ruutulippu which is mostly concentrated in F1 and other four wheel motorsports like rally. I can tell you this is somekind of a big deal to get nominated by these people as a motorcyclist and more specificly enduro rider! I am truly touched by this nomination and the fact they chose me for the second time in a row means a lot to me and enduro as a motorsport in Finland! WRC silver medalist Jari-Matti Latvala got nominated as ”the fighter of the year” and it was quite a coincidence that we were on the same flight to Lisboa, Portugal the day after! Jari-Matti was traveling to south of Portugal with his co-pilot Miikka Anttila to test their new Ford Fiesta WRC while my business in Portugal is to attend to F.I.M. prize giving gala which takes place today in Estoril.

Couple of days ago also our Finnish motorcycle federation SML organised a ”cake&coffee” celebration and press conference to celebrate their champions and medalists at the Finnish sports federations building in Helsinki. Totally there were three world championships won. Mine in Enduro, Joonas Kylmäkorpi in Long Track and Pekka Päivärinta in Sidecar Road Racing. SML made history this year by claiming two new titles in sports they never won before. A world championship title won in Long Track by Joonas Kylmäkorpi who by the way knows hell of a lot more about power sliding than I and a European championship title in Drag Racing Top Fuel class won by Petri Paljakka. In Enduro at international level beside my world title there was Eero Remes’s bronze from E1 and Roni Nikander’s junior European championship title. It was nice to get together with other champions and the cake was good. It was also interesting to talk with the fastest motorcyclist in Finland! Petri the drag race champion lives in a totally different world than me! I mean whereas I put on my chest protector he puts on a bullet proof vest and a gas mask! The vest and the mask are safety features for they operate 1300cc supercharged engines with nitromethane and depending on percentage can produce 1200-1600hp!!! The engine on neutral revs from idle to top rpm in 0,01s (one hundreth of a second) and accelerates from 0 to 160kmh in one second. The pilot is basically laying on his belly above the engine hanging on the handlebars and bracing his foot horizontally on the footpegs with one meter long flames coming from the exhausts. Top speed in 400m is around 230mph/370kmh and he says the braking from that speed is the most complicated thing as the tracks are too short and never really have safety zones. You can imagine the risks involved in this kind of racing. If the engine brakes down from full gas it literally explodes and pieces of the wreckage can reach the velocity beyond an assault rifle’s bullets! Petri told me of a guy who had his arm shot through by a spark plug. In fact the spark plugs are critical piece of special parts and Petri uses something like 400 of them in a season for they can be used for one start only. Bike burns more than 30 liters of fuel in one start and the Makes me think about Mad Max which was one of my favourite movies back in 80’s.