European champion coming to the Faroe Islands

Machine-translated from Faroese and not yet reviewed. Read the original.

Over Easter we will have a very exciting visit from Sweden. Mattias Sunneborn and Jorma Jaaskelainen from Gotland are both coming to the Faroe Islands to hold some training sessions. FÍF has long been planning to invite these talented coaches to the Faroe Islands, and now it has at long last become a reality.

Mattias and Jorma have many years of athletics behind them. They both took part in the Island Games in the Faroe Islands in 1989. Jorma won gold in the triple jump, while Mattias, who was only 18 years old at the time, won silver in the 400m, gold in the 110m hurdles and the 400m hurdles, as well as gold in the 4x100m and silver in the 4x400m. Since then Mattias has taken part in every Games, and has won the third-most medals of any Island Games participant in total.

Mattias was among the world elite in the long jump for several years, and has also won the European indoor title

Mattias Sunneborn has also won the most medals at the Swedish Championships, outdoor and indoor. He set that record as recently as last year. He still competes at a high level. At the European and World Masters Championships he wins gold in many events, and so is perhaps the world’s best athlete over the age of 45.

1995/96 was Sunneborn’s best period. In 1995 he won silver at the World Indoor Championships, and the following year he became European indoor champion in the long jump. In August 1996 he competed at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, where he finished 8th in the final. Mattias was at the Olympic Games again in Athens in 2000, but he did not jump well there. Mattias’s best ever jump was 8.21 metres, and this was also a Nordic record for many years, until it was broken recently.

Jorma Jaaskelainen has also taken part in every Island Games, although in many of the later years as a coach and team leader. He has been coach and coordinator of the Gotland Island Games squad for many years. In his day job he works as a PE teacher in Visby, and when he gets time off, he goes straight out to Gutavallen, where the Island Games were held last summer, and carries on with athletics training.

Jorma as we know him. At Gutavallen, where he coaches, and in front of the school where he teaches PE.

We will hold four training sessions with Jorma and Mattias. The sessions are open to everyone who is interested, and of course we hope as many as possible will come along. That includes our coaches, who we hope can find a bit of inspiration over these days, as the sessions will be organised so that the coaches can also get as much out of them as possible.

Saturday 31 March
11:00 – 13:00 at Tórsbreyt – sprint training

Easter Sunday 1 April
14:00 – 16:00 Children’s training, with the emphasis on play.
All children are welcome – grown-up children too.
We will be at Skúlin við Løgmannabreyt

Easter Monday (2nd day of Easter) 2 April
14:00 – 16:00 jumps training
If the weather is good, the session will be at Tórsbreyt. If the weather is bad, we will be at Skúlin við Løgmannabreyt

Tuesday 3 April
17:00 at Tórsbreyt
Power training for recreational runners

Tuesday evening 3 April
Suicide Zero – talk in the hall of Starvsmannafelagið at 19:30

Suicide Zero
A week before Mattias Sunneborn started upper secondary school, his father suddenly took his own life. This was a huge shock for Mattias, and it has left deep marks on his life. For many years there were many evenings when he cried himself to sleep. But the shame over what his father had done meant that he did not want to talk about it.

Today Mattias is an ambassador for the Swedish organisation Suicide Zero, which works to reduce suicides. In Sweden, on average four people take their own lives every day.

Mattias is perhaps the best-known representative of the Suicide Zero organisation, and does tremendous work to reduce suicides

While Mattias is here in the Faroe Islands, he will give a talk on this sensitive subject. He will explain how sport can help prevent suicide and how sport has helped him move forward in life.

Naturally, we hope many people will come to the talk, which is free of charge.

Sunneborn sets a world record in the long jump for +40