Mike Dale meets the former World Junior Championship winner whose ensuing career did not quite match those of others on the event’s illustrious roll of honour.
(First published in issue 24.2)
When the world’s best young squash players assemble in Houston, Texas in July for the 30th staging of the World Junior Championships, the stakes will be high. The event nearly always proves to be an accurate forecast of future greatness – and with LA 2028 on the horizon, the winners will face sharper scrutiny and more expectation than ever before.
Of the 23 winners of the men’s World Junior Championship title since its inception in 1980, seven have gone on to become world No.1, four reached the world’s top five and a further five are still young enough to potentially get there.
Egypt’s Amr Khalifa, the most recent of the anomalies (having beaten Ali Farag in Ecuador to become world junior champion in 2010) sustained a serious back injury only two years into his PSA Tour career. Ahmed Faizy (champion in 1996) reached world No.36 but disappeared from the scene.
A little further down the list, in 1992, you’ll find Juha Raumolin from Finland.
A few days short of his 19th birthday in August of that year, he came from a game down to beat none other than Jonathan Power – a future world No.1 and world champion – 5-9, 9-3, 9-7, 9-2 in Hong Kong.
This was no fluke.
In January of that year, Raumolin had won the British Junior Open (then known as the Drysdale Cup) beating England’s Hadrian Stiff in four games in the final at Lambs Club in London. In April, he won the European Under-19 title in Oslo, beating Belgium’s Stefan Casteleyn. So, British Open, European and World junior champion within six months – and yet those with a longer memory and more encyclopedic squash knowledge than mine have only a vague memory of him.
That may be because his career thereafter never fulfilled the tantalising promise of these sensational late teenage years.
He won four relatively minor PSA Tour titles, all in America, and when Squash Player tracked him down via the magic of LinkedIn, he recollects vaguely that his ranking reached “maybe top 50” at his peak (the venerable squashinfo.com actually has it at No.31)
Raumolin’s hot streak coincided with a period of outrageous over-achievement for Finnish squash in the late 80s and early 90s. Alongside former world no.7 Sami Elopuro (nine years his senior), Raumolin helped achieved runner-up finishes in the European Team Championships in 1991, 1992, 1995 and 1998. Finland also reached the semifinals at the World Team Championships of 1993, losing only to an Australian team featuring Rodney and Brett Martin and Rodney Eyles.
Raumolin, now 50, recalls: “In the 80s, Finland had a large squash scene with lots of courts. In those days everybody played squash, a little bit like padel now. There was a huge boom.”
Starting aged eight at a four-court club just a few minutes’ walk from his home in Espoo, Raumolin profited from having a large group of older and better players to train with and play against. Aged 12, he started playing more at a national training centre in Helsinki.
Hanging out there with PSA players Elopuro, Pentti Pekkanen and Marko Pulli during his midteens accelerated his improvement.
“It was really good fun,” he remembers. “We did lots of training and hard work, especially with the adult male players. You went to the club in the morning and there were always sparring partners. You didn’t need to book, you just went along and got really good quality training.
“In those days, Finland was known for very fit players. Everyone was training really hard on the fitness side, but the technical and tactical side wasn’t so sophisticated.”
This theme of high fitness levels but a lack of explosiveness, subtlety in his racket skills or tactical acumen was part of the reason that Raumolin’s senior career failed to ignite.
“I had a solid, tight game but although I was very fit, I wasn’t very fast, that was one of my problems,” he admits in retrospect. “I had long distance type of muscles, not explosive like a 100 metre runner. I played a high-pace game to keep the other guy behind me. I tried to make them do so much hard work that their head exploded!”
When his junior career ended, Raumolin, like all other Finns, did military service, although he was allowed time off to compete on the PSA Tour. Nevertheless, his game plateaued.
“I was getting better, but I wasn’t really happy overall,” he says. “I tried to develop my speed but I needed more coaching on my game. We were very fitness-orientated but the tactics and skill side we learned from watching other countries. You can get by in juniors, but later on I had too many things I needed to develop.
“Perhaps I could have done a bit better if I had moved to the UK, but I wasn’t prepared to do that at the time. If I’d chosen to seek radical changes in my training then maybe I could have gone further as a professional. I had a different type of skillset than someone like James Willstrop or Ramy Ashour.
“Finland was known for very fit players. Everyone was training really hard on the fitness side, but the technical and tactical side wasn’t so sophisticated.”
“I feel I reached my potential.”
Despite some notable senior wins (he beat England’s Simon Parke and Wales’ Alex Gough at the European Team Championships in 1998 in his home city of Espoo), by 2000 his frustration and lack of consistency saw him end his career aged 27.
He did a degree in finance and marketing at the Helsinki Business School and has worked in banking and asset management in service development and IT ever since. “I’ve been living a far more boring life than a professional squash player!” he jokes.
Despite this slightly anti-climactic ending to the story, his name will be forever etched on the World Junior Championship Hall of Fame. He recalls of 1992: “I loved Hong Kong – it has always been one of my favourite places to play. They made everything so easy. I was top seed and I knew Jonathan Power would be quite a tough opponent, but I knew if I could be consistent enough and keep up the pace I might have a chance.
“Perhaps it wasn’t his best day. At that time, he had some really good racket work and was very deceptive but perhaps he wasn’t yet that fit and his game wasn’t too well structured.”
These days, Raumolin – like many older squash players – has been beset by knee problems. He gave up squash a couple of years ago but plays a lot of padel. He watches SQUASHTV and smiles broadly when asked about his beloved sport finally achieving Olympic status. “It is so well deserved,” he says.
He laments the “catastrophic” decline of Finnish squash since his heyday, but is positive about a resurgence: “I believe we reached bottom a few years ago. I actually think the padel boom will help squash because it brings more excitement about racket sports. At squash clubs now, I see lots of people in their early 20s having fun – even if the competitive level is nowhere near what it used to be.”
Will this year’s World Junior Championship winners in Houston be able to sustain their success into the senior ranks, and even become Olympic champions in 2028?
If they learn anything from Raumolin’s story, it should surely be this: Enjoy success while you can. And it’s better surely to burn bright then fade away, than never to have burned at all.
