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 Kiuruvesi is a List of cities and towns in Finland, town and municipalities of Finland, municipality of Finland located in the Northern Savonia regions of Finland, region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of of which is wa ...

. As an athletics coach, he specialized in training jumpers for

Örgryte IS Örgryte Idrottssällskap, commonly referred to as Örgryte IS, Örgryte () or (especially locally) ÖIS or Öis, is a Swedish sports club based in Gothenburg. It consists of four departments, namely bowling, football, athletics and wrestling. H ...

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 A stepfather or stepdad is a non-biological male parent married to one's preexisting parent. A stepfather-in-law is a stepfather of one's spouse. Children from his spouse's previous unions are known as his stepchildren. Culture Though less com ...

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 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 jump The triple jump, sometimes referred to as the hop, step and jump or the hop, skip and jump, is a track and field event, similar to the long jump. As a group, the two events are referred to as the "horizontal jumps". The competitor runs down th ...

er Christian Olsson. He died in

, Sweden.

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