{"id":538,"date":"2009-04-22T01:03:50","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T22:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/blog\/?p=538"},"modified":"2009-04-22T13:55:08","modified_gmt":"2009-04-22T10:55:08","slug":"cocks-takes-over-hc-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/?p=538","title":{"rendered":"Cocks takes over HC West and cultures clash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/cocks.jpg\" alt=\"cocks\" title=\"cocks\" width=\"500\" height=\"329\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-550\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/cocks.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/cocks-300x197.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 85vw, 500px\" \/><br \/>\nThanks to Esa Ranki,  I was lucky to witness the decisive game four where Riihim\u00e4ki&#8217;s Cocks beat down Kauniainen&#8217;s HC West in the Finnish handball league. Cocks took the championship for a third time in a row. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/?p=171\">The first victory came in 2007.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>What we saw were two very different teams. HC West looked like a well-behaving team of innocent-looking swedish-talking student boys. Cocks looked like a noisy gang of guilty-looking finnish &#038; other eastern-european dialects talking tattooed bodies  most of whom work as guards in the Riihim\u00e4ki county jail. You could see and feel the difference.<\/p>\n<p>There was in the 1990s a lone graffiti welcoming new guests in the Riihim\u00e4ki railway station. It said: &#8220;Welcome to Riihim\u00e4ki, the ugliest town in eastern europe.&#8221; For some reason, that graffiti stayed there for several years.<\/p>\n<p><center>* * *<\/center><\/p>\n<p>Over the period break I met Jani Peltonen, my old running rival from the Riihim\u00e4ki years. We once clocked in exactly the same time 4.39-something in a school meet&#8217;s 1500m when we were like 15. Not even the cameraman was able to tell a difference. Now that was competitive running&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Esa Ranki, I was lucky to witness the decisive game four where Riihim\u00e4ki&#8217;s Cocks beat down Kauniainen&#8217;s HC West in the Finnish handball league. Cocks took the championship for a third time in a row. The first victory came in 2007. What we saw were two very different teams. HC West looked like &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/?p=538\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Cocks takes over HC West and cultures clash&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":551,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions\/551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}