Viljo Nousiainen (9 March 1944 – 11 June 1999) was a prominent Swedish Finn

athletics coach A sports coach is a person coaching in sport, involved in the direction, instruction and training of a sports team or athlete. History The original sense of the word ''coach'' is that of a Coach (carriage), horse-drawn carriage, deriving ultima ...

Career

Nousiainen was born in Kiuruvesi. As an athletics coach, he specialized in training jumpers for Örgryte IS Sports Club in

Gothenburg Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...

during the 1970s. He is best known as the coach and stepfather of Swedish world record

high jump The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat f ...

Patrik Sjöberg Jan Niklas Patrik Sjöberg (; born 5 January 1965) is a Swedish former high jumper. He broke the world record with in Stockholm on 30 June 1987. This mark is still the European record and ranks him third on the world all-time list behind Jav ...

. His other noted trainees were high jumpers

Yannick Tregaro Yannick Tregaro (born 26 March 1978 in Gunnared) is a Swedish athletics coach. Early career Tregaro was a prospective high jumper, who placed 10th in the final of the high jump at the 1996 World Junior Championships. His coach was Viljo Nousiai ...

and

Stefan Holm Stefan Christian Holm (born 25 May 1976) is a retired Swedish high jumper. He won an Olympic Games, Olympic gold medal, a silver medal, silver in the World Championships in Athletics, World Championships, and one silver and one bronze medal in ...

and triple jumper

Christian Olsson Christian Olsson (born 25 January 1980) is a former Swedish athlete competing in high jump and triple jump. He won an Olympic gold medal, one gold and one silver medal in the World Championships and two gold medals in the European Championship ...

. He died in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

Scandal

In April 2011, Sjöberg and Tregaro revealed they had been sexually molested as children by Nousiainen. Sjöberg recounted Nousiainen's abuse in his biography ''Det du inte såg'' (''"What you didn't see"''). In 2009, Norwegian athlete Christian Skaar Thomassen, contacted his friend Sjöberg and told him that Nousiainen had also molested him when he was 11 years old. That conversation was the starting point for the book.

References

1944 births 1999 deaths People from Kiuruvesi Finnish emigrants to Sweden Finnish athletics coaches Swedish athletics coaches Sportspeople from North Savo {{Finland-athletics-bio-stub

Career

Scandal

See also

References