Last week one of my best friend the orienteering world champion Pasi Ikonen passed away. I met him first in 90’s in Baltic Sea Tour, became my club mate for years in SK Pohjantähti and he was also the first employee hired on my company e-Coach. Most of the orienteering and sports following people knew Pasi after his dominance in orienteering in the beginning of this century.
Pasi was kind of perfectionist on the issues related to orienteering and he changed also my way of thinking about the optimal navigation. In fact it was rare to find an orienteer in 1990’s (and still is :-)) that would not just anticipate (ennakoida) and wait for the reduced forms (pelkistettyjä muotoja) seen on the map but would rather read almost all the single stones and other exact point symbols printed on the map inside the unawareness ellipse. Timo Karppinen was doing that and also some other slower guys but most of the top ones still relied heavily on reduction and compass. When Pasi removed the compass with his coach Eino Havas many were surprised how stable and errorless Pasi became. One year he only made mistakes 7 seconds/km through the whole season which is still very high rate among elite orienteers. By removing the compass Pasi got more into the map and showed that the laser scanned and gps-pointed maps are nowadays reliable to read if you just have time and will to read it.
Pasi is remembered about the games he played like floorball, football, ice hockey / bandy etc. More rarely is known that he was also the first ones in the world to exercise fast interval terrain running trainings (which sometimes also hurt him on the back). I remember many legs which were technically difficult to run to just see Pasi flying over the obstacles with his divinal stride leaving others far behind. With simplified and automated navigation Pasi got more time to concentrate on just pure running as fast he could especially on the orienteering technically easier parts of the course.
Rest in peace Pais!
t. Marko
