Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Esko Lähtevänoja

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect‎ to FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1978#4 × 10 km relay. Despite substantial discussion, nobody proposes anything but redirection or deletion. Sandstein 08:43, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Esko Lähtevänoja[edit]

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BLP, Fails GNG and NBIO. Sources in article and BEFORE found nothing with WP:SIGCOV from WP:IS WP:RS addressing the subject directly and indepth. BLPs require strong sourcing. Ping me if sources are added to article that meet WP:SIGCOV and are not routine mill news or stats. // Timothy :: talk 06:08, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Sportspeople and Finland. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 07:08, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1978 pending sources. The Finnish Wikipedia have none either. I failed to find some here as well, although I'm not sure if I used it correctly. Geschichte (talk) 10:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The National Library of Finland newspaper archive has about 1800 hits for "Esko Lähtevänoja" if one has a researcher account that allows access to more recent newspapers, but these are largely your run-of-the-mill sports coverage about how he fared in some competition or another. Some of the more promising stories include the following:
- A two-thirds page article in Ilta-Sanomat (25 Feb 1978, page 33), but it's a combined interview of four young Finnish athletes who are hoping to take part in the 1980 Winter Olympics and contains pretty much zero independent content.
- A two-thirds page in Kaleva (3 March 2017, page 26), which reminisces about how he participated in the 1978 Finnish championship biathlon relay. The actual contents are pretty much just "here's how he did in 1978, and here's a few quotes from today". I'm unclear why this is a news story.
- A story in Helsingin Sanomat (24 February 1978, page 26) but the amount of encyclopedically useful information is, again, highly limited: we learn pretty much only how he fared in the 1978 Finnish championship, that he has previously won (unnamed) local competitions and that his father is his coach.
- A segment in Etelä-Suomen Sanomat (7 November 1981, page 21) about how he is "in the shape of his lifetime" and preparing for the "Oslo world championship", whatever that is. This one is perhaps the best in terms of making claims of notability, calling him the "most successful Finnish young (lit. "boy") skier of all time" and noting how he "won the boys and young men's national championship four times in a row". But beyond those claims, the actual contents are then just more of the standard "he's in really good shape and ran a fast lap just recently".

I don't think these quite reach GNG. There's also a bunch of Swedish language stuff I don't have the time to translate (my Swedish is abysmal, and reading it takes a lot of effort), but based on quick glimpses it looked to be more of the same.

Overall, I'm getting a sense of a promising young athlete who never truly broke through. There might be something in more specialized sources (e.g. books on Finnish skiing), but hypothetical sourcing doesn't count. While I didn't go through all the old newspapers, what I saw makes me think this is borderline at best, and unlikely to ever go beyond a stub. While I'm not quite ready to !vote yet, I'm leaning towards something else than a keep. -Ljleppan (talk) 10:56, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can help out with Swedish sources Geschichte (talk) 12:05, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I appreciate the offer but I can't really share the texts :/ Ljleppan (talk) 15:21, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I unfortunately lack the time to dig deeper into this, and what I've found so far indeed looks to fall short of what I'd consider a notability pass. As such, I'll note myself down as a Redirect to FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1978 per Geschichte above. Please ping me if more sourcing is identified, and I'll happily reconsider. Ljleppan (talk) 22:24, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to prioritize it either. By the way, the Oslo world championship would be the 1982 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. I don't think he participated there, as he would have been mentioned in Norway. He is mentioned, though, as coming in 9th in the 1978 Holmenkollen ski festival 50 kilometres, one of the most historic races in the world. So there's potential. If this is redirected, admin, please mark it with {{R with possibilities}}. Geschichte (talk) 09:02, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I'm unsure if a redirect would be warranted, or if more time to try to find sources would be better. However, if there is a redirect, I would weakly prefer it point to FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1978#4 × 10 km relay, the sole section where this individual is mentioned. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 03:32, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.