Jukka Vastaranta is a male Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 pro-cyclist from Tampere

Tampere

Tampere is a city in southern Finland. It is the most populous inland city in any of the Nordic countries. The city has a population of , growing to approximately 300,000 people in the conurbation and over 340,000 in the metropolitan area. Tampere is the third most-populous municipality in...

. During 2003-2006 he rode in the Dutch team Rabobank

Rabobank (cycling)

Rabobank is a professional bicycle racing team, sponsored by the Rabobank. The team consists of three sections: ProTeam , Continental , and Cyclo-cross...

 but for 2007 he switched to the Belgian continental team Jartazi-Promo Fashion. In 2008 he rode for the mountain bike

Mountain bike

A mountain bike or mountain bicycle is a bicycle created for off-road cycling. This activity includes traversing of rocks and washouts, and steep declines,...

 team Brink-Ten Tusscher, but after a good start had to retire again due to his prolonged health problems.

After settling back to Finland, in late 2008 he finally found some help for the health problems he had suffered from past several seasons. In 2009, he significantly got better and won all Finnish mountain bike races that he took part in and finished 36th in MTB Marathon World Championships.

Jukka started the season 2010 without a team (a short contract with a Greek Pro Continental-level road team turned out to be something that Jukka wasn't looking for), but was stronger than ever before. He finished 4th in MTB Marathon European Championships and took some important victories in Europe. In July, the first MTB XC Olympic Champion Bart Brentjens

Bart Brentjens

Bart Jan-Baptist Marie Brentjens is a Dutch racing cyclist in mountain biking.Brentjens won a gold medal for mountain biking in the 1996 Summer Olympics, the first to recognize cross-country mountain biking as an event. He followed this with bronze in the 2004 Summer Olympics...

contacted Jukka to join his professional team, Trek-Brentjens MTB Racing Team.

Major results

UCI Mountain Bike World Championships

• 8th, Marathon (2011)
• 27th, Cross Country (2010)

UCI Mountain Bike European Championships

• 2nd, Marathon (2011)
• 4th, Marathon (2010)
• 1st, Cross Country Juniors (2001)

UCI Mountain Bike Finnish Championships

• 1st, Cross Country (2011, 2010, 2009, 2001)
• 1st, Marathon (2010, 2009)

UCI Road Bike World Cup

• 1st overall, Juniors (2001)

UCI Road Bike World Championships

• 2nd, Juniors (2002)

UCI Road Bike Finnish Championships

• 1st, TT (2004)

Miscellaneous

• 1st in KitzAlpBike XCO (2011)
• 3rd in Dolomiti Superbike (2011)
• 1st overall in Zillertal Bike Challenge (2010)
• Winner of the 2nd event of Spanish MTB Marathon Cup (2010)
• Stage winner in Ster Electro tour (2005)
• Second in Tour of Luxemburg (2005)