 A bit like a cross between bowls and hockey, Curling has been becoming increasingly popular in Finland since the last Olympics. And in just three years, Scottish expat Mark Middleton has managed to corner the market with ‘Suomi Sports,’ aiming to become the biggest provider of Curling equipment in Scandinavia.
‘It started two years ago,’ says Mark, originally from Glasgow, who has been living in Finland for nine years. Having set up the business with two friends, Mark now runs it single-handedly in addition to his day job as a project management consultant.
It has become the largest provider of Curling equipment in Finland and hopes to soon become the largest also in Scandinavia and it is all because of Mark’s Scottish connections.
‘Scotland’s the home of Curling,’ says Mark. ‘It’s got the biggest Curling wholesaler in Europe . . . so we just passed our orders onto them.’
Other Curling providers had to purchase the equipment in bulk for a small market but Suomi Sports were able to sell the equipment supplied by a Scottish company meaning that they could offer a much wider range.
Shaking People’s Hands
An avid Curling enthusiast himself, Mark promoted Suomi Sports ‘by travelling to the competitions and shaking people’s hands.’ Now, when the travels to the competitions ‘I set up shop there as I’m going there anyway so I may as well make a bit of money out of it!’
Not only a fan, Mark is an amateur curler himself. ‘Our team’s called Suomi Sports Leskinen!’ laughs Mark, ‘because those are two sponsors!’ he says, referring to the Rotuari pub that is popular amongst expats.
When his team first played in the various tournaments in Finland, ‘they’d thrash us! We’d be losing fifteen to nil!’ Suomi Sports Leskinen is in the Northern Finnish Curling League. The team is amateur like all Finnish Curling teams.
Pebbles, Ice and Brooms
Curling is thought to have been invented in late Medieval Scotland. The game, played on Scotland’s frozen rivers, involved teams trying a guide a flat-bottomed pebble towards a target (known as a ‘house’) using brooms. Today, Curling is played all over the world, though Mark points out that it is a ‘minority sport’ in most countries as in Finland. It is particularly popular in countries such as Canada, Scotland, Switzerland, and Sweden.’ It has been an official sport in the Winter Olympics since 1998.
The modern game involves two teams of four ‘curlers.’ Teams take turns to sweep the stone to the target. Of these four, two ‘sweepers’ attempt to guide a heavy granite curling stone towards a target down a relatively small, ice-covered, rectangular playing area known as a ‘curling sheet’. They are directed by the team-mates but it requires a lot of skill as neither the sweepers nor their equipment is supposed to actually make contact with the stone during play. Perhaps for this reason, Curling has been referred to as ‘chess on ice’ by one Olympic commentator.
The specialist equipment which Suomi Sports sells includes curling stones, special curling brooms and special curling shoes which allow you to slide on the surface or, depending on your position in the team, provide traction against the slippery surface.
Mark also does ‘fitness boxing’ and Suomi Sports sells some of the equipment for this such as boxing gloves. ‘I only do it to keep fit,’ stresses the thirty-five year old. ‘It’s purely about fitness . . . there’s the biggest fitness boxing club in the world here or at least that’s what they say.’
Unlike normal boxing – or ‘English Boxing’ – fitness boxing is not a combat sport and doesn’t involve hitting opponents about the head.
‘Cheer Up!’
Having been in Finland for nine years, Mark speaks very good Finnish, though he is insistently modest about it despite knowing certain curling terms in Finnish but struggling to remember them in his native English. When he worked in Raahe, Mark would insist on speaking in Finnish – despite the offer of an interpreter – telling his colleagues that, ‘if you want to practice English you should go to England.’
Mark has found many things ‘different’ about life in Finland but he is adamant that he doesn’t want to come across as ‘a typical, moaning foreigner!’
‘Some people in Oulu say to me, “What do you wanna come and live here for?!” I say, “Cheer up! Take a step back and look at what you’ve got!”’
Mark loves that way that he can practice all kinds of sports in Oulu, ‘I can go for a dip in the city centre . . . I can have a sizeable house and a piece of land . . . you can’t have that in the UK unless you’ve got serious money.’
The one thing that gets him down about Oulu is ‘people moaning about the darkness . . . not the darkness . . . just people moaning about it! For goodness sake just cheer up!’ he laughs.
Suomi Sports works with ‘Kays of Scotland’ and equipment can be ordered through its website as can ‘curling lessons’ if ‘chess on ice’ is for you.
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Well done.