With the next round of the MXGP championship with the running of the Grand Prix of Finland at the KymiRing circuit, the motocross world brings its attention to one of the most beautiful countries that also has one of the sport’s biggest legends as their role model.

It’s been a while since Finland had a really top line Grand Prix racer. Way back in the 1970’s Heikki Mikkola was the man in the 250 and 500 classes, winning FIM World Championships in 1974 (500cc), 1976 (250cc), 1977 and 1978 (500cc).

Of course the greatest rival to Mikkola was Belgian great Roger De Coster and those two fought hard for GP glory in the 1970s. Mikkola was a very consistent performer, finishing with 3-3-1-2-1-1-1 results in championship battle from 1972 until 1978.

Mikkola also won 32 GP overalls, with 25 coming in the 500cc class and seven in the 250cc class. His legacy will always be because he was somebody who never gave up, and under no circumstances saw anything but victory and a world title as his goal.

Finland didn’t really have that many FIM World Motocross Championship contenders after Mikkola, and it wasn’t until Pekka Vehkonen won the 1985 World 125cc Championship that a Fin was able to add to the success of Mikkola.

Vehkonen like Mikkola was also very consistent in his challenge for world glory, finishing with five top five finishes, 1st in the 125cc title in 1985, and second in the 1987, 88, 89 and 90 FIM 250cc World Championship. Vehkonen won 17 GP overalls, 12 in the 250cc class and five in the 125cc class.

Others to win Grand Prix overalls for Finland were Kalevi Vehkonen with two wins in the 250cc class, Aarno Erola (250cc), Tapani Pikkarainen (500cc) both one a single GP each.

There have been other Finnish riders who have shown great speed on the FIM Motocross World Championship, names like Jussi-Pekka Vehkonen who finished with third place in the 2007 MX3 world title and Antti Pyrhonen who finished third in the 2009 MX3 World Championship.

Both Pekka Vehkonen and Pyrhonen were top class MX1 riders before dropping down to the MX3 class. Of course Pyrhonen is now the team manager of the Kawasaki Factory Racing team. Harri Kullas is the leading Finnish rider at present although he is presently racing in American in the AMA series. Injuries and bad luck have not seen him reach his true potential.