Mika Myllylä and the famous snap of his skiing pole - Lillehammer winter olympics 1994

Just couple of weeks ago the surprising and sad news told that the famous finnish nordic skiing athlete Mika Myllylä has suddenly passed away. Purely by coincidence I browsed my illustration archives yesterday and stumbled upon an illustration which I had made somewhere in the end of 1990's for the Cosmos magazine. The article was making top-list of the most disastrous instants in finnish sport history. One of those unfortunate moments was when Mika Myllylä broke his skiing pole during the furious winter olympic race in Lillehammer 1994 and lost chances to take his first personal medal.

Despite what happened in Lahti 2001 and all sad turns of event after that, we may with all due respect say that he was a great athlete.

RIP Mika

Tour de France illustration

I was supposed to start this blog ages ago. At some point I noticed that deciding what would be the very first post became an issue that held me back - which illustration could be special enough to start an illustration blog..? I bet there must be name for that: "First Post Syndrome" or something like that.

Today it suddenly struck me that the Tour de France is about to start in couple of days. That's it. I'm ready for the "Second Post Syndrome". So, I would like to honour the Tour de France 2011 with this cycling illustration that I made some time ago for a book.


I just hope that this year they are climbing uphills without any doping boost :)