Staffan Tunis: “The plan is to stop now”

Staffan Tunis: “The plan is to stop now”

Staffan Tunis is not training so much in hours than he used to, but again he has got the title World Champion.

The Finn, who comes from Vaasa on the west coast of Finland, won the Middle Distance at WSOC four years ago in Sweden. Since then he has become father to small children. He is also working almost full time for most of the year. “But this winter I’ve been at home with the children,” he says.

He took part in his first WSOC in 2005, and since 2007 he has got a medal at every WSOC. “After this year the plan is to stop, but now I have got a free place in the Middle Distance in two years’ time. We’ll have to see,” he smiles.

On the Middle Distance today he had a quite comfortable lead of about 20 seconds after the first three loops. On the last loop he had to go back to the fourth last control since he didn’t get a punch. Just after that he again saw the lead was about ten seconds. He knew then that it looked good for a win.

With the new life with family and work he’s not training anything like as much as earlier, but he is doing a lot of hard training and has also the benefit of years with hard training earlier.

“Last winter it didn’t work so well, but now it has gone better,” he says.

-How good is your level?

“In 2011 and 2012 I was very strong physically,” he says.

In navigation, he has got more routine. “Maybe I can be on an equal level compared with my best earlier,” the World Champion smiles.