Finland’s new gymnastics star Maisa Kuusikko – this is how the self-critical and icy 17-year-old made history

Where Finland on the men’s side has won several major competition medals in artistic gymnastics over the past decades, there have been few joys on the women’s side. Now a young Tampere girl is showing the way.

– Maisa trains very conscientiously. You can see that she wants to develop and that she likes to train.

– Maisa is good at focusing and can shut out her surroundings. She keeps her cool even in big competitions.

In the equipment room in the Ikuri sports hall in Tampere, Maisa Kuusikko is showered with praise by her training mates in the Tampereen Voimistelijat.

One of them is Finland’s latest female Olympian in artistic gymnastics, Annika Urvikko, who participated in the all-around qualification in London 2012, but missed the final.

– Maisa plans thoroughly and when she has decided how she wants it, she often succeeds in the competitions and doesn’t run into any surprises, says Urvikko, who during her elite career managed to participate in the WC a total of seven times.

Many have tried, but none have come even close to 17-year-old Maisa Kuusikko’s feat in last year’s World Championships, where she became the first Finnish woman ever to reach the all-around final.

According to Kuusikko herself, the biggest reason why she has succeeded so well is that she really likes to train hard and that she has repeated her competition series so many times in training that they have become bombproof before she starts doing them in competition.

– When I tell myself before a competition series that you can do this, I trust that I actually can.

Watch Sportliv’s mini-documentary about Maisa Kuusikko:

Maisa Kuusikko, 17, made Finnish gymnastics history – but why her?

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Play on the Arena

Third generation gymnast

When Maisa Kuusikko calmly and methodically lists the reasons why she has succeeded in what no other female apparatus gymnast in Finland has succeeded in before, the coaches come in second. Nowadays, Igor Cherepov and Ida Laisi are responsible for the daily cross training, but she learned the basics from mother Ulla.

Kuusikko has grown up in a sporty and sports-interested family. Both parents are gymnastics teachers, and Maisa and older brother Veeti got to try many sports as children.

Pretty soon the siblings would still follow in their parents’ footsteps. Father Rami’s branches have been football and ice hockey and today Veeti plays football in Ilves in Tampere.

As both grandmother and mother are former apparatus gymnasts and mother is also a former national team gymnast, it was only natural that Maisa would be allowed to start in a children’s group when she was four years old. When she was six she took part in her first station competition and ever since then she has enjoyed competing.

– I am lucky in that I have always been good at competing. It has come naturally to me and I have always had a strong will to win.

Where some of her friends experience the competition situation as very stressful, she herself has always thought that competition day is the best day.

– I don’t like the feeling of nervousness and of course I am also nervous before competitions, but over the years I have become more comfortable with it and never experienced the competitions as scary.

Kuusikko is not the superstitious type who makes sure to do everything the exact same way before every competition to ensure it goes well, but has probably developed certain routines.

– Before I fall asleep the night before a competition, I go through my series in my mind once. I see the movements as I myself see them, not as if I were observing the whole thing from the outside.

On the day of the competition, she goes through everything one more time, just before the performance.

– To dwell on it too much in the head, especially on the day of the competition, is not the best, at least not for me.

Nervousness for better or for worse

In the all-around, the ladies compete on four different devices. Nervousness affects performance in different ways.

According to Kuusikko, nervousness can even be helpful on vault and vault, while on beam and bars it can derail everything.

Over the years, she has learned how the adrenaline in her body affects her.

– In stand-alone where the series is dynamic and you move over a large area, you can take advantage of the adrenaline.

The same goes for the explosive jump.

– In the jump, you may have to speed up a little further away because the adrenaline makes the power in the running step greater and the step longer than in training.

On bars, where the difference between catching and missing the islet is very thin, you have to treat the gear in a different way than in training. But most critical is the nervousness on the boom.

– You have to be able to calm yourself and the situation down. The boom is only ten centimeters wide and if your legs shake, it is easy to fall off the tool.

Self-critical perfectionist

Although Kuusikko is only seventeen, she already has extensive international competition experience.

– My coach Igor has already taken me to competitions around the world from a young age. It has de-dramatized the actual competition situation and taught me to deal with nervousness.

How the coach acts on the competition floor also plays a big role. According to Kuusikko, you recognize a good coach when he or she manages to say the right things at the right time, but also keep quiet.

– My coaches are very good at reading me. If things get a little bold, they encourage me and remind me that I can do these things. If I’m fluent, they stay in the background and give me room to fix it on my own.

The pressure she feels at competitions comes exclusively from herself. She wants to show off what she knows she can do.

– I am very self-critical and even if a competition went well, I can get annoyed by small mistakes I have made.

Only when you have repeated a new exercise thousands of times in training does it become appropriate to include it in the competition series.

– I can be a little impatient and expect it to succeed the first time, which it rarely does, but if it succeeds, the feeling is indescribable.

Back injury postpones the start of the competition

Like most other elite gymnasts, Maisa Kuusikko has also experienced the downsides of hard training.

After the euphoria of success in the World Championships in November, Finland’s new gymnastics star was brutally brought down to earth when the increasing pain she felt in her back turned out to be a stress fracture.

It is uncertain when she can start this year’s competition season.

– Of course I was both sad and disappointed. I had had a very good year competitively and repeated my streaks countless times in training. Suddenly I couldn’t even jog or hang out at the barre.

The day before Sportliv visits Maisa at the beginning of January, she has received a happy message from her doctor. The new MRIs show that the back appears to be healing well.

After almost two months of devoting herself exclusively to alternative training and rehabilitation, she gets to hang on the barre for the first time in a long time.

After she has carefully swung back and forth a few times, she jumps down with a small cheer.

– It always feels fantastic when, after an injury, you can start doing the things you normally do in training. In and of itself, I don’t usually hang out at the bar, she says with a laugh, but still sees it as a big step forward.

– I have a feeling that it will probably be good.

A few weeks later, Kuusikko has been allowed to return to gymnastics training and although she can hardly compete already in March as planned, 2023 can also be a good year for Gymnast of the Year in Finland 2022.

Luckily, before she was forced to take an unplanned training break, she managed to prove both to herself and the outside world that she has what it takes to fight at the absolute top.

But surely the damage could have come more timely. As early as April, the EC awaits in Turkey. Both the EC and the WC are of great importance this year in the hunt for Olympic places.

– I hope my back is in condition for the EC and that I can participate in both the EC and WC as planned. Now everything depends on the back.

Finland has had female participants in artistic gymnastics in only four Olympic Games, in 1952, 1960, 1964 and 2012.

If everything goes according to plan, Maisa Kuusikko can make a Finnish Olympic comeback in Paris 2024.