Norway’s director of elite sport sounded a little bit hoarse when he answered the cellphone to NCS Sports. Tore Øvebrø mentioned he had simply caught a chilly, however he admitted that his raspy voice may also have one thing to do along with his cheering over the final two weeks.
“It didn’t help,” he chuckled just a few days in the past. “I had to cheer just now because we’ve just won another gold in the Nordic Combined. We have 16, that’s the Olympic record, and we hope for a couple more. So, it’s fantastic!”
Of course, the Games weren’t achieved then. Norway ended Milan Cortina 2026 with a file 18 golds – and 41 complete medals.
It’s now an proven fact: Nobody can contact Norway at the Winter Olympics. From 2018 in Pyeongchang by means of the Italian Games in 2026, the Norwegians have at all times come out on high.
A tiny nation of roughly five-and-a-half million folks – about the identical as the US state of South Carolina – has found out how you can preserve beating international locations like China (1.4 billion), the US (342 million), Germany (84 million), Italy (59 million) and Canada (40 million). Clearly, they’re doing one thing proper, and maybe a few of their rival nations like the US could learn a factor or two from the Nordic champions.
It would possibly come as no shock {that a} Nordic nation would excel in winter sports activities, however the fact is that Norway has been punching effectively above its weight in lots of sports activities for a while. Norway has lately produced Olympic champions in seaside volleyball and a number of in monitor and discipline – two quintessentially summer time sports activities.
Their triathlon program is celebrated as the greatest in the world, Viktor Hovland is one in every of the high golfers, Casper Ruud made it to world No. 2 in the ATP rankings, Erling Haaland is one in every of the most feared strikers in the “Beautiful Game” and Ada Hegerberg received the most prestigious particular person honor in world soccer, the Ballon D’Or.
There are many causes for Norway’s success, however there is one frequent theme: An emphasis on enjoyable and enjoyment that begins at the grassroots degree.
Until the age of 12 in Norway, no one in youth sports activities is allowed to maintain rating, and there aren’t any league standings both. As a end result, there is far much less damaging stress and no cause to specialize too quickly, and younger athletes are inspired to check out a number of sports activities. If one participant will get a trophy, everybody will get a trophy; they need as many kids as doable to return the following season.
Such a small nation can’t afford to lose athletes whose expertise won’t be totally revealed till their later teenagers. Norwegian coaches don’t are inclined to mistake early bloomers for gifted athletes.
“I find that many of the big sporting systems are more occupied with getting rid of people at the young age than develop many,” defined Øvebrø. “Why do I say that? It’s all about selection and selection is another way of getting rid of people. We are few. We have to take care of everybody.”
Haaland performed in the identical blended growth group of 39 boys and one lady at Bryne FK till he was 16. The group was by no means damaged up into first, second and third groups, no one dropped out, and a handful of these gamers ended up turning skilled.
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo at all times thought he’d be a soccer participant at some point; the truth is, he was positive of it . But he would come to appreciate that his true potential lay elsewhere – in Italy, he received six gold medals in cross-country snowboarding to turn into the most profitable Winter Olympian of all time, his 11 gold medals surpassing three different athletes who had eight golds to their names.
All are Norwegian, by the method.
The sports activities growth pipeline in Norway is much less about making an attempt to determine expertise rapidly and then turbo-charging the athletes to success, it’s extra about letting them discover their very own method, making certain that once they’re prepared to affix an elite-level program, they’ll make the most of it.
“When you try different sports, you also meet different cultures and that means you develop the social skills to handle different kinds of people,” mentioned Øvebrø. “There is a broad learning base and when you have those kinds of kids, it’s easier to build a high-performance culture; they know who they are, what they want. We like the kids to feel that they are in it for themselves.”
The distinction with the system in the United States couldn’t be extra stark.
US comic Josh Mancuso ridiculed the American journey baseball system, which begins at the age of seven, in a viral reel which has been seen by tens of millions of individuals on Instagram.
“First tournament is a regional in South Florida,” his coach character defined. “From there, we’ll head to Costa Rica and Ecuador for two more tournaments. You’ll need bats, gloves, cleats, pants, jerseys, specialty jerseys, carts, tents, chairs, speakers. This is basically the major leagues. … It will cost $27,000 per family.”
“I think the video resonated with so many American families involved in travel sports because it’s one of those ‘it’s funny, but it’s not’ situations,” Mancuso advised NCS Sports.
“Parents are smiling through the pain while spending gobs of money on tournament fees, high-end equipment and name brand swag so their 11-year old feels like a MLB All-Star. I can’t lie though, I would have loved it all when I was a little slugger.”
In each method, such applications are unthinkable in Norway, a extremely egalitarian society, wherein wealth and sources are distributed evenly. There aren’t any obstacles to entry in sports activities, no one is priced out of participation.
Geir Jordet is the professor of psychology and soccer at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences in Oslo. He advised NCS Sports that his nation’s sporting success could be summarized in three phrases: “Collaboration, communication and care.”
Once the elite athletes have been recognized, they’re helped to fulfil their potential in applications that make the most of innovative information, science and expertise, together with the practical use of psychology.
“The top Olympic Sports Center is 10 meters away from the Sport University where I’m currently sitting right now,” he mentioned, emphasizing that Norway’s diminutive stature facilitates collaboration inside the elite sports activities neighborhood.
“There’s a very strong sharing culture across sports in Norway and also from academia and from science to sport. There are very short lines of communication when it comes to knowledge. People come to that center from different sports, they meet there, they train there together, they communicate and they learn from each other.”
A rising tide lifts all boats in Norway, and – whether or not it’s athletes, applications or sports activities – they cooperate with different for so long as doable, they solely compete once they should.
Author Brad Stulberg, who lately revealed “The Way of Excellence,” is fascinated by the Norwegian method, particularly as he contrasts it along with his personal expertise as a mother or father and coach in the US.
“I think that Americans could learn a lot from the Norwegian model,” he advised NCS Sports, “especially the emphasis on fun and participation over winning. The data is very clear, the number one reason that kids quit sports is because it’s no longer fun. The number two reason is because they feel too much pressure.”
When Stulberg highlighted the causes for Norway’s success in a put up on Instagram, he says that a few of the responses in the feedback appeared to be triggered.
“So many Americans just get deeply offended by this idea,” he defined. “It’s a lot of, like, batsh*t crazy parents who feel called out because they are on the sidelines screaming at referees at their eight-year old’s baseball game. It just makes no sense; the parents need to put the kids first. It behooves us to keep sports fun, to try to release the pressure, to develop a love for sport and then keep them in sport so that later on they can be competitive.”
Tore Øvebrø says that by the age of 25, 93% of Norway’s inhabitants has been concerned in some form of organized sports activities. Conversely, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported in 2024 that 70% of youth athletes drop out of organized sports activities by the age of 13 – damage and burnout are the principal explanation why.
“Discontinuation of sports during childhood plays a role in the more than 75% of adolescents in the United States who fail to meet physical activity recommendations,” mentioned the report.