Many teams would be happy to have just one Oivanen in their ranks. Finland has two of them: Matti and Mikko Oivanen are probably the most renowned twins on the volleyball courts in Europe and they want to help their team to deliver a similarly good performance at the EuroVolley 2011 as in the CEV European Championship 2007, when Finland finished fourth.
This has to be the Finish sense of humour: “How you can tell us apart? It’s easy – we look differently“, explained Mikko Oivanen once in an interview. Of course, it is not so easy because at the first glace the two resemble each other like two volleyballs. However, if both are on the court the difference is obvious: Mikko acts as wing spiker while Matti’s role is that of the middleblocker.
For a long time the career of the two developed very similarl: inspired by their mother, the two brothers who grew up in the small town Huttinen in the South of Finland, abandoned track and field athletics in 1995 at the age of nine and started to play
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