Anssi Koivuranta belongs to the Finnish elite in Nordic combined: he is a World Champion, an Olympic medallist and a World Cup winner. Compared with the rest of the population, among skiers the percentage of asthmatics is considerably higher. Anssi Koivuranta is one of them.

Allergies An athlete with a history of allergies is at a high risk of developing asthma. Winter sports in cold, dry weather are particularly stressful on the lungs of allergic athletes.  It is estimated that up to 30 to 40 per cent of competition skiers suffer from asthma.

“I’ve suffered from hay fever type allergy for about ten years, and I had my first asthma attack about five years ago at a training camp in Vuokatti,” Anssi Koivuranta relates.

Anssi’s first encounter with asthma was very frightening for him and the trainers and other athletes around him.

“I thought I was going to die, because I could neither inhale nor exhale. I was totally blocked; I couldn’t even speak. Fortunately there was an asthma patient in the group, and he understood what was happening to me. He gave me a bronchodilator to open up the airways,” Anssi explains. (Bronchodilators are substances that open the airways.)

Permission
to take medication

The athlete was hurried to the Kajaani hospital for further examinations, and he was diagnosed with asthma. Since then, his treatment has continued at sports clinics, and the Anti-doping Committee and the Finnish Ski Association have given him a special permission to use asthma medicines. Many of their active ingredients are prohibited in elite sports.

The treatment of asthma is based on cortisone, combined with a bronchodilator. Anssi is now also taking an inhaled drug that combines a long-acting bronchodilator and anti-inflammatory cortisone.

Grasses and hays dictate
summer training schedules

According to Anssi, asthma has had so little effect on his life that he does not feel it has been a handicap for him in competitions.

“After the first attack I thought that my sports career could be over for good. For some time I was afraid of becoming short of breath. However, my regular medication has worked so well that the illness is completely under control, at least for the time being. In addition, I always take the bronchodilator before tough training sessions and competitions. I’ve had no problems whatsoever, just a slight feeling of breathlessness every now and then.”

Anssi gets the worst allergic symptoms – mostly watering and itching of the eyes – from meadow fescue and timothy hays in high summer. He has learned to avoid the worst places during the blooming season.
“For a couple of years now, we’ve planned my summer training with consideration to pollen seasons. I leave the northern areas and go south to train depending on the blooming of the grasses,” he explains.

Sports as
a way of life

The difficult season with the disappointments at the Vancouver Olympics is now over and done with, and Anssi is following his normal summer training programme to prepare for the coming season.

“Summer training is mostly quite monotonous fitness maintenance to ensure that I’ll be fit enough for really hard training in the autumn,” says Anssi. The World Championships in Oslo in February–March 2011 are his main aim in the coming season.

The Oslo World Championships in February–March 2011 are the main aim for the season.”

Anssi, 22, lives in Kuusamo in Northern Finland, and he has never even considered anything but a career in sports.

“Being born into an athletic family, with a big brother who is also a Nordic combined competitor, my choice of sports was actually self-evident.”

Text Timo Nykänen | Photo Lehtikuva