Roope Suomalainen
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Finland| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Roope Samuel Suomalainen |
| Nationality | Finland |
| Born | 6 September 1973 Kotka, Finland |
| Height | 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in) |
| Weight | 81 kg (179 lb) |
| Sailing career | |
| Class | Dinghy |
| Club | Kotkan Pursiseura |
Roope Samuel Suomalainen (born 6 September 1973 in Kotka) is a retired Finnish sailor, who specialized in the Laser class.[1] He represented his nation Finland in two editions of the Olympic Games (2000 and 2004), and has also been training throughout most of his sporting career for Kotka Yacht Club (Finnish: Kotkan Pursiseura) in his native Kotka.[2]
Suomalainen made his official debut at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, where he placed seventeenth in the Laser class with a net grade of 127, surpassing Hungary's Tamas Eszes by a single mark in total.[3][4]
At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Suomalainen qualified for his second Finnish team, as a 30-year-old, in the Laser class by placing fourteenth and obtaining a berth from the 2003 ISAF World Championships in Cadiz, Spain.[5][6] Unlike his previous Olympics, Suomalainen could not upgrade his feat with a nineteenth-place effort in a fleet of forty-two sailors, recording a net score of 160.[7][8]
