Kiira Korpi figure skater

The cute Kiira Korpi is a figure skater from Finland.


Kiira Korpi made her competitive skating debut as a 14-year old in the 2002 Finnish Championships. She finished 13th in the senior levels of the 2005 European Championships at Torino, Italy. Kiira came first in 8th Merano Cup 2005 Merano and in Finlandia Trophy 2006. The Finnish skating federation nominated Kiira to join the Finnish team at the 2006 Winter Olympics, where she finished in 16th place.


But it was at the European Championships later that year that Kiira Korpi became a popular name in her native country when she got Finland the bronze medal...only the second female skater to get a medal in that championship ever. Apart from her skating skills, Kiira Korpi is becoming well-known globally because of her physical beauty and good looks. In the last couple of years she has acquired an international fan following and has been featured on magazine covers.

Kiira Korpi with her Finnish teammates Jenni Vahamaa and Laura Lepisto

Kiira Korpi was born on September 26 1988 in Tampere Finland. Close to her home is a skating rink, but Tampere like most of Finland is the base for another more popular skating sport, ice hockey! In fact Kiira's father Rauno Korpi played in the local Tappara Tampere ice hockey club, which won the national hockey championship of Finland. He later coached the women's hockey team of Finland to a bronze medal at the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan.


But neither Kiira nor her older sister Petra were ever drawn to take up ice hockey, even though they went to see all the games. Petra says, "I and Kiira have never tried ice hockey, we haven’t even ever put hockey skates on." Due to Rauno's job as coach, his family moved around Europe with the team, spending time in Austria when Kiira was 5.

Kiira and her sister Petra featured in Finland's Apu Magazine

Kiira is very close to her sister Petra Korpi. They are almost the same age, Petra being older by only two years, and the same size. The sisters have had plenty of fights over clothes! Petra took up figure skating and participated in competitions, but at the age of fifteen her hamstring muscle ruptured while Petra was skating, and never healed completely. That ended her skating career about the same time as Kiira Korpi was starting to compete.

Petra focused on her high school and then studied marketing in a business school at Vaasa. Says Petra, "I have handled Kiira’s fanmail on the time I have from my studies, and we have even talked about starting a business togheter, but that’s not current until Kiira’s skating career is over and I have graduated." Petra is currently (April 2008) an exchange student in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Kiira lets out that she and her sister have the same taste in men; the Finn girls don't care if their guys are blond or dark or tall, they just have to be athletic and positive.


Apart from figure skating Kiira enjoys snowboarding, roller-skating, and other regular girl stuff like music and meeting friends. Her favorite movies of all time? Galdiator, Lord of the Rings, and Ice Age (no surprise here!). Kiira Korpi's favorite actors are Johnny Depp and British girl Keira Knightley, who is almost her namesake. The name Kiira is the Finnish form of Kyra, which is the feminine version of the original Persian name Cyrus, also found in the Old Testament.




Kiira would like to vacation somewhere warm like Hawaii and her motto in life is, "Believe in your dreams and they tend to come true." Her popularity in Finland led to Kiira being nominated as the The Most Positive Finn personality in 2006. The next year she was awarded Inhabitant of The Year by the people of Tampere, receiving the award at her Sammon Urheilulukio upper secondary school.



2008 has been a mixed year for Kiira Korpi....she finished in 5th place at the European Championships. Kiira graduated from school in March but failed at another skating event.


At the World Figure Skating Championships in Gothenburg Sweden this March, Kiira Korpi ended up in 9th place overall behind her teammate Laura Lepistö. After the short event, where she performed well and was in fourth place, Kiira Korpi dressed in pink, had some missed triple jumps during her performance in the free skate event. More embarrassingly she fell while attempting a spiral sequence.



Kiira Korpi was seen next in Malaysia, where she spent time with her sister and also visited the Sepang race track where the Finns Kimi Räikkönen (for Ferrari) and Heikki Kovalainen (for Mclaren) were competing.


Kiira Korpi has some time off before her next major competition, the Invitational Competition in Japan on April 29. Like her sister Petra, Kiira plans to study further, and will apply at the Tampere School of Economics. Good thing that she's completing her education, since it's her beautiful looks that set Kiira Korpi apart from her teammates. She could have gone down the route of just doing advertisements and then going into movies.