Watch this Olympic coach knitting on a mountaintop while his athlete goes for gold

Angelica Florio
Updated
Watch this Olympic coach knitting on a mountaintop while his athlete goes for gold

What do you do when you’re the coach of a hopeful Olympian and your trainee is about to compete in the race of their lifetime? You knit. Well, that’s what Antti Koskinen of Finland did. That’s right, an Olympic coach was knitting on the sidelines in PyeongChang, because for some people, the Olympics are totally casual, we guess.

Believe it or not, Koskinen has done this before. Back in 2014 at the Sochi Games, the Finnish snowboarding coach made headlines for knitting atop the mountain. This time, Koskinen grabbed viewers’ attention when he worked on his knitting before Roope Tonteri competed in the men’s slopestyle event.

U.S. snowboarder Redmond Gerard ended up winning that competition — which Shaun White did not compete in. Tonteri, on the other hand, finished in 15th place. At least everyone knows that it’s not because his coach was putting too much pressure on him.

On Twitter, Finland’s Olympic team made it sound like Koskinen’s knitting is casual, everyday occurrence, tweeting, “Oh yes, he is knitting again.” They even added a smiley face. If nothing else, the knitting makes Finland’s snowboarding team look, overall, pretty crafty and cool.

Fans freaked out when they spotted Koskinen knitting.

And they took to Twitter to alert the world.

While most other coaches stare at their athletes with sharp focus and intensity, Koskinen seems completely unbothered by the high-stakes competition at hand.

He even smiled while crafting atop the slope.

DIY goals?

As Mashable pointed out, Koskinen’s 2014 knitting project had a patriotic purpose. In Sochi, the snowboarding coach had been working on a project with the other athletes from Finland to share with all of Team Finland.

The scarf that the team made atop the mountains in Russia would get passed to Team Finland during the Summer Olympics in 2016. What a great way to show support for one another.

This time, according to the team’s Twitter account, the Finnish team is knitting a blanket for their president’s newborn son.

Don’t mind us, just casually crying.