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February 21, 2006
Local skier missed Games
Ahvo Tiapale is the Finnish born proprietor of the Finn Sisu ski and sauna business on University. It features ski schools and is one of the four remaining shops in St. Paul area, on a trend of gradually disappearing cross country ski orientated retail, particularly over the last ten years. His high-level cross country ski competition understudy Chad Giese has been with him since the ‘80s, and more recently after graduating from college, he’s been on a regimen of training for the U.S. Olympic team for this year’s games.
Giese has received strong support from the community, sufficient financial backing from homespun fundraisers, a slot on the Suburu team, and a flexible full-time job at Metronics which accommodated Giese’s training as an Olympic hopeful for the 2006 games.
He didn’t qualify in the end. “It was very disappointing,” Taipale said. Taipale attributed a complicated points system that compounds a skier’s past and present performances to Giese’s misfortune. “[Giese is] one of the best skiers in the country,” he said. Accepting his Olympic disappointing, he’s been a very successful racer, with consistent number of top-tier finishes.
Tiapale met a high school Giese in the mid ‘80s through cross country skiing where they fostered a close coach-pupil relationship, with rigorous regimented training and long-term planning. Taipale enunciated it: “Just trying is a waste of time.” According to Taipale, a skier needs to commit to a six- to ten-year training regimen for high-level competition, a sort of dedication he doesn’t see much in the region.
“The goal was the 2006 Olympics,” Tiapale said. Now Giese and Tiapale need to reassess where they want to or see it going.
Taipale saw an opportunity to set up shop in retail 28 years ago. Now, even with a dwindling market for ski merchandise and a decreasing number of ski shops, he personally doesn’t run the risk of going in the red. If that part of the business were to falter, he’s always got his successful sauna construction business. Currently the shop is “doing okay” but with a seven year ongoing (exception of 1 year he says) lack of snow which is affecting the sport as a whole, he adds musingly “We’re not running a charity here.”
Taipale came to Minnesota in the ‘70s for a two-year agricultural program at the University of Minnesota, racing with the college team. He stayed in the United States and didn’t follow up on the agricultural angle, nor did he have Olympic aspirations. “I wasn’t very serious,” he said.
Opening the shop has provided him access to the cross country ski community along with his reputation as a racer, attracting people from around the country. Though high profile skiers have been associated with the shop in the past, including Joan Bauer and Susan King, currently the only protÄgÄ degree relationship he has is with Giese. “I don’t solicit those kinds of commitments,” he said.
Posted by dwright at February 21, 2006 05:11 PM
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