Original text by Petri Ikävalko, English text by Teemu Virtanen

The best Finnish Pro Team, Team Mäenpää, is on its own again after a year with combined efforts with Nordic Athlete. The team’s manager Kim Mäenpää is confident that they will be back with a vengeance.

The team has also recruited Anne Kyllönen, a former Finnish National Team member. She joined the team for their training camp in Indre, Sweden.

“At the camp, I got deeper into understanding the principles of long distance skiing and  Visma Ski Classics. It was important to be able to do race-like workouts together with the team already at this stage of the training season. My double-poling is still a bit of a mystery and I don’t know how well I can do when racing against the best female skiers in the world, but I’m very motivated to work for it,” Kyllönen comments.

Kyllönen is no stranger to long distance skiing as she participated in Ylläs-Levi in 2018 and 2019, finishing 7^thand 5^th respectively. She also represented Team Mäenpää in those two races. In addition to wearing Team Mäenpää’s racing suit, Kyllönen aims to qualify for the Olympics next winter.

Located about a six-hour drive from Stockholm, Idre was the team’s choice for their latest training camp.

“As a camp site, Idre was new to me. The training conditions were versatile, and the facilities were generally brilliant. The camp left a positive feeling. I am already preparing for the next team camp, which starts at the end of August in Livigno,” says Anne Kyllönen.

The upcoming training camp in Livigno, Italy, is going to be for two weeks. Viktor Mäenpää plans to stay in high altitude for another week.

“We are still planning to do a camp in Majorca in October. In November and December, we will be back in Idre for some early season skiing,” says Kim Mäenpää.

At this time, Team Mäenpää has plans to take part in almost every race in the Visma Ski Classics Pro Tour in Season XII.

“According to the preliminary plan, we’ll skip the Misurina prologues in Italy at the beginning of January. At that time, we’ll do some high altitude training elsewhere to prepare for the next weekend’s La Venosta”, reveals Mäenpää.

Kim Mäenpää hints that his team may be strengthened by a new female skier.