Comments on: Jukola 2019: Stora Tuna takes surprise victory!

By: Bernt O. Myrvold

Bernt O. Myrvold — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 06:59:06 +0000

IOF have no rules for changing clubs. Some ten-fifteen years ago some of us was working quite hard to try to harmonize the rules for the Nordic countries. It proved quite impossible. The different countries has their own rules and their own general assemblies that decides the national rules.
More or less ther only thing all countries could agree on was that their jurisdiction ends at a border. What a Norwegian runner does in Norway is governed by the Norwegian rules, what he does in Finland is governed by the Finnish rules. This obviosuly left a large grey zone. The Norwegian rules stated that you could join a new club at any time. The Finnish rules had limits on when you could change clubs. So going from Finland to Norway you would breach the Finnish rules, but not the Norwegian. There were no way the Finnish rules could be used to punish you in Norway. The pragmatic approach was that the elite clubs (mostly) have contracts with their best runners the regulates what obligation they have towards the club.

Another thing that was agreed upon back then was that you could only participate in one natinal championship over a given distance in one year. I think a few runners was disqualified for breaching this rule, but it proved unenforceable in the long run.
One, nameless, Finnish runner took part in the Norwegian Middle distance championship with great success. Three weeks later in the Finnish Championship. Removing him from the Norwegian result list would clearly break the Norwergian Sports Federation Rules, that you cannot disqualify a runner if he/she has has breached a rule that has no influence on the sporting performabnce and result. And it is hard to argue that running a new competition three weeks later will give you any advantage.

BOM

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 06:43:50 +0000

Well, all in all it’s a very fluid situation with club identity these days, whatever rules applied, or made exceptions from, in different countries and competitions. And even though having no big moral issues with that, I still think it’s all nice to see that the very home grown and locally produced team of Stora Tuna makes it all the way to the top of the podium in Jukola.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 14:47:41 +0000

Perhaps it is interpreted as running for one club in all Finnish season competitions unless the exception? I remember a few years ago Fabian Hertner running for his Swiss club in Jukola, with the article saying this was with Kalevan Rasti’s permission.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 14:57:28 +0000

Armas, what I can understand from your writing in english it seems to me that there has to be quite many exceptions from the main rule for competing in the Jukola relay. Maybe to an extent that it has transformed into a new main rule?