Toni Ketelä ended his international ski career in 2018. He immediately spent a few years on the ski service side while traveling with the Finnish Team in the Junior Championships. 

“I feel that I have the most to give the youth regarding ski knowledge and testing. For me, it has been motivating to be involved. During Covid, I was not traveling with the Team to the races, but this season I have again been involved to a small extent,” Ketelä tells maastohiihto.com.

Toni still skis actively as a hobby, but there is a lot more to life than that. Ketelä studied environmental technology and graduated as an engineer in 2022. He has been working in his field since his studies. Ketelä has also become a father of two, and the family has built a house. In addition, he has also done a small amount of ski waxing services and taught ski schools in the Vaasa area in Finland.

“Just the right amount for my current life situation,” Ketelä says.

Ketelä has been working as a wax technician on ski races for 15–17-year-olds. When he was that age, his father was heavily involved in ski waxing.

“We tested skis for different weather conditions a lot and went through the ski fleet all winter long. So, from a young age, I had an idea of what it takes to find good skis. It helps immensely to have a support person who does the testing with the athlete.”

So, what does it take for the athlete to work with the support person and get the best skis possible? What do you need to know about the skis?

“In a skate ski, telling doesn’t help much, so to say. It is more about being on the skis and learning how they work. With the classic technique, there is more of a dialogue between finding and refining the grip.”

“In skating, I have noticed that sometimes the juniors have had a hard time working as a team and doing parallel tests through both athletes’ race day pairs. However, when testing skate skis, the parallel test does not tell the whole story because skate skis are not designed to have the weight on both skis. In downhill position, you can, of course, see how the ski glides downhill, but not how it behaves on the ‘working’ sections or uphills.”

“In skate skiing, I would encourage you to think about how the skate ski reacts when you work on it, how it manages the pressure when transferring the weight and how it speeds up, or whether the ski starts to ‘bite’ on the snow. That is how you get to know how the skate ski behaves when you are working on it, and that is extremely important for an athlete to learn to recognize that. What is more important for the performance is how the ski behaves during the working sections, not how the ski glides on a pure downhill.” 

 “Of course, the same challenges apply to the classic skis, for example, how the ski behaves in a high-speed double poling. Does the profile of the ski carry on the ski so that the grip does not ‘bite’ on the snow, and does the ski speed up well from the power output?”

“It is worth testing skis in different weather conditions with cross pairs to get to know the skis on different surfaces. This will help to refine the characteristics of the ski fleet. It is also always helpful to keep a ski testing diary.” 

How Many Skis Do Juniors Need?

What kind of ski fleet do junior skiers have, and what kind of skis do they need? When Ketelä thinks back to when he was 15-17 years old, he reckons he had 5-6 skis per style. With that number of skis, juniors can still manage well in races.

“It was harder to find skis in the extreme conditions, but I had several pairs of universal skis. My experience is that in early winter, investing in going through the fleet is worthwhile. Early winter testing is key. If you change the brand, you may not get a comprehensive ski fleet together in one season or year. It depends on what kind of service you get from the new brand. For example, if you get 5+5 pairs of skis per season, you will likely not find top pairs for every condition in the first set. If, on the other hand, it is possible to change or purchase new equipment for a particular condition during the season, this will speed up the process of building up the ski fleet.” 

Ketelä says that before entering international competitions, young skiers should have these basic markings on their skis: where the grip area starts and where it ends, the end kilos of the ski, and the height of the camber. It is a plus if you can find height markings indicating the curvature of the grip area.

“This will reduce ‘the guessing game’ in the service room. It would also be good to know in which conditions the pair of skis has been good and in which temperatures. Either marked on the ski or in the ski test diary.”

He would also like to remind people of the importance of grinding their skis:

“Too often, you see skis with scratches or clogged or glazed bases. In such cases, the ski does not absorb the wax as desired, and the grind’s profile does work in its favor. This can only be remedied by a good stone grinding. There should be an understanding that at least once a season, skis need to be grinded. Even if there are not necessarily scratches.”

Ketelä has noticed during his trips to the Junior Championships that Finnish skiers have a lot of potentials. Skiers are “surprisingly ready” even at that age.

“They know what endurance sport is. Good things have been done there, the right things.”

“There could have been more endurance-based training”

Ketelä is also interested in coaching junior skiers, but his time is limited.

“If I could coach some of the young athletes in this region, I would be able to be present locally.”

What would you do if you could do something differently in your training between the ages of 16 and 20?

“I would train more. Explosiveness and power output were always my strengths, so my training focused too much on developing these qualities. However, if done correctly, low-intensity volume training does not undermine the above-mentioned qualities and their development. At the age of 12-18, I was coached by my mother and managed to win gold and silver medals at the Finnish Junior Nationals. In light of current knowledge, volume training should already have started at that age, so a few 3-4 hours of training a week should be included. There should have been more endurance-based training.” 

Here you can read more about equipment and training.