Johanna Matintalo
Johanna Katariina Matintalo is a Finnish cross-country skier and former track and field athlete. She set Finnish age group records as a middle-distance runner and was national champion in the women's 800 metres in 2013, but injuries and stagnating results led her to concentrate on skiing. As a skier, she won silver in the women's skiathlon at the 2017 World U23 Championships and represented Finland in the 2017 World Championships.
Running career
Matintalo broke the national age-13 record in the 1000 metres in 2009 with her time of 3:01.01; the following year she set age group records in both the 600 metres and 1000 metres. In 2011, as a 14-year-old, she won silver in the 800 metres at the national senior championships; she improved her personal best by almost six seconds to 2:05.87, which was a national under-16 and under-18 record and the best time in the world by an under-16 runner that year. Matintalo won silver again in 2012 before winning her only individual national title in 2013. She represented Finland in the women's 800 metres at the 2012 World Junior Championships in Barcelona, but was eliminated in the heats; at the 2013 World Youth Championships in Donetsk she survived the heats, but went out in the semifinals.Matintalo's development as a runner stagnated early, a problem exacerbated by injuries; she never improved her 800-meter personal best from 2011. In 2016, she decided to drop athletics and concentrate solely on her other sport, cross-country skiing; the injuries and lack of improvement, as well as Finland's strong skiing team and high-level skiing tradition, were all factors in this choice.
Skiing career
Matintalo was a talented skier from an early age; as a youth, her training programs for skiing and running were compatible and supported each other. She represented Finland in cross-country skiing at the 2013 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in Brașov, placing eighth in the 5 km classical race. In 2015, she competed in the World Junior Championships in Almaty, where she placed 16th in the under-20 skiathlon.At higher levels, the increasing incompatibility of skiing training and running training made it impossible for Matintalo to continue to seriously pursue both sports indefinitely; as a skier she needed much more upper-body strength, implying additional mass that would slow her down as a runner. In 2016, she decided to continue skiing at the cost of athletics; she moved from her home town, Pöytyä in southwestern Finland, to Rovaniemi in the north for better training conditions. The move paid off, as she had a good 2016–17 season; at the 2017 World Junior Championships in Park City she won silver in the under-23 women's skiathlon despite skiing with an injured ankle.
Matintalo qualified for the February 2017 World Cup races in Otepää as a substitute for Riitta-Liisa Roponen, who had suffered a season-ending back injury. Matintalo had a breakthrough race, placing an unexpectedly good 12th in the 10 km classical; she was the second-best Finn behind Krista Pärmäkoski, defeating national team mainstays Kerttu Niskanen, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, Laura Mononen and Anne Kyllönen. On the strength of this result, she was added to the Finnish team for the 2017 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Lahti, Finland; her championship debut was in the 15 km skiathlon, in which she placed 29th.
Cross-country skiing results
All results are sourced from the International Ski Federation.Olympic Games
World Championships
World Cup
Season standings
Team podiums
- 2 podiums –
| No. | Season | Date | Location | Race | Level | Place | Teammates |
| 1 | 2018–19 | 9 December 2018 |  Beitostølen, Norway | 4 × 5 km Relay C/F | World Cup | 3rd | Pärmäkoski / Roponen / Piippo |
| 2 | 2019–20 | 1 March 2020 |  Lahti, Finland | 4 × 5 km Relay C/F | World Cup | 2nd | Niskanen / Mononen / Pärmäkoski |