"For Norway, everything changed after the 1988 Calgary Games, where it won just five medals, none of them gold. That was an unacceptable outcome.... Norway, which had quickly transformed from a middling economy built around fishing and farming into a petroleum-rich nation, started plowing money into Olympiatoppen, the organization that oversees elite Olympic sports. It also doubled down on its commitments under its Children’s Right in Sports document, which guarantees and encourages every child in the country access to high-quality opportunities in athletics, with a focus on participation and socialization rather than hard-core competition. Norway’s well-funded local sports clubs, which exist in nearly every neighborhood and village, do not hold championships until the children reach age 13.... 'There just seems to be a lot more emphasis on including everybody,' said Atle McGrath, a 21-year-old Norwegian Alpine skier whose father, Felix, competed in Alpine for the United States at the 1988 Olympics... Jim Stray-Gundersen, a former surgeon and physiologist who is the sports science adviser to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, lived in Norway, where his father grew up, for five years while working as a scientist with Norway’s Olympic athletes. He said a priority of the country is to build a culture of health and regular exercise, and its competitive prowess flows from that. 'It’s how you produce psychological satisfaction, healthy life habits, and stellar athletes over time, and it’s very much in contrast to how we do it and don’t do it in the U.S.,' he said."
Here's the final medal count. Norway finished with 16 gold medals, twice that of the U.S.A. Germany won the second most gold medals — 12 — but Germany has a population of 83 million.
Notice that what produced a lot of medals also seems to be great for everyone's health and well-being.
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I don't watch the Olympics, but I know they are producing golfers, too. Suzanne Peterson and Viktor Hovland come to mind.
They don't even Start championships until age 13?
This is CRAZY! Everybody Knows by age 15 you are over the hill.
Bravo, Norway!
Maybe. Color me skeptical. I have been reading these types of stories since my youth 60+ years ago. The basic premise being that whatever the European countries are doing (especially Scandanavia) is good, healthy, and spiritually fulfilling and whatever the US is doing is the opposite. It also seems to me that Norway has excelled at the winter Olympics way before an unusually poor performance in 1988. Might it have to do with 9+ months of winter and mountainous terrain? I don't begrudge them their triumph, in fact, I congratulate them. It's just the constant denigration of our lifestyle and ways that grates. These types of stories are like catnip to NYT readers.
Well, if the NYT says so.
The latest submission from the next Walter Duranty?
So Norway has become ridiculously wealthy while avoiding the resource curse, because it started as a first world country filled with Norwegians, and it turns out there are benefits?
Why do Kenyans win the marathons?
Norway is awesome. Always has been always will be. My Mom's family is from Norway and our motto is Strong like Bull, Smart like Tractor.
Nordmenn er født med ski på beina.
Norwegians are born with skis on the legs.
If the story is true, great for Norway.
This is the conversation that has been severely lacking in the USA for the last couple of years during the covid era. It isn't all about getting shots. We need to live a healthy lifestyle, devoid of things that are bad for you. We need multivitamins and especially vitamin D supplements, and physical exercise and fresh air.
I'm not sure why this conversation never really happened, but I have a few ideas.
The stated Norwegian fertility rate ranges from about 1.48 to 1.68.
With a fertility rate of about 1.5, in 800 years Norway will only win about 0.00034 Gold Medals in the Winter Olympics.
With a fertility rate of 1.7, they'll win about .018 Medals.
Fun Fact! "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Congratulations, Norway!
One way they rack up so many medals is they have great competitors in Biathalon, where they award a boatload of medals. Some other events, like Ice Skating, only have 2 medals possible per competitor.
Which is not me knocking cross country skiing. It is so hard!
My mom was from Norway. Her father built her first skis when she was a toddler. Even though she lived in a coastal city that got far less snow than the area inland, she skied whenever possible, just for the sake of mobility. Back in those years, dirt-poor Norway had the best skiers in the world without all the modern infrastructure and programs.
I coached very young baseball players when my boys were very young, and then for several years afterwards. What's important in youth sports, at least for the players and their development, is repetition of fundamentals and having enough fun to come back next year. Winning is something that is important only to the parents, at least in the 5 to 9 year-old cohort. During one season, when I was league commissioner for the 5 year-old t-ball league, parents were teaching the children to roll the ball to first base, because there was a better chance of making an out than if the infielders threw the ball, never mind the development of basic baseball skills. To stop this kind of behavior, I canceled the posting of scores and wins, and did away with the post-season tournament. For many of the parents, this was infuriating and harmful to their kids: "Life is about winners and losers, and the sooner they learn that, the better". I can't begin to tell you how many players developed into good baseball players later, meaning in the early teens, some of them standouts in high school, who started out at age 6 unable to field or hit a ball with any regularity, and I will always wonder how many dropped baseball entirely rather than endure constant criticism and parental disappointment without much fun along the way. Norway's decision to postpone championships until age 13 is a very important step in developing superior athletes, some of whom would have dropped out long ago from a more traditional program. I used to try to explain to parents that we were indeed trying to build killer ballplayers, but that we couldn't do that at age 6, and they needed to relax and let kids develop at their own pace before jumping to conclusions about skill level and potential, much less worrying about wins and losses. I was generally unsuccessful.
I have stayed in at least one of the Norwegian Olympic training centers and the facility is beautiful and relaxing in the Scandinavian way of mixing tel beauty of the country with the calming architecture filled with natural products. As the article points out Norway is currently an "oil-rich" country. What happens when the world abandons in favor of some high-tech green energy?
and it’s very much in contrast to how we do it and don’t do it in the U.S
Norway is monocultural and the United States is not. As PJ O’Rourke kind of said in Eat the Rich, in Scandinavia when the government offers free ice skating to everyone, everyone cheers.
Not many in the US would cheer. Norway also recognizes resources like money are finite. The US assumes money is unlimited. That never ends well…
Seems short sighted to invest a lot of money in winter sports when AGW means snow is just a thing of the past.
I have been reading these types of stories since my youth 60+ years ago. The basic premise being that whatever the European countries are doing (especially Scandanavia) is good, healthy, and spiritually fulfilling and whatever the US is doing is the opposite
Me, too…and the stories always cherry pick nice things by never examine the tradeoffs Scandinavian countries make, and the things they don’t have where the US squanders its economic resources.
Again, see Eat the Rich for examples…
Yes, but how diverse was their team? Did they have the required number of transgender competitors? How many POCs?
You (and the Times) left out the obligatory #WhitePrivilege tag.
Man, lane ranger's last sentence was a real rug-puller.
Re: Rehajm's claim that Norway is "monocultural": That may have been true in the past, but they have not been immune to Europe's importation of "refugees." The CIA Factbook says:
Ethnic groups
Norwegian 81.5% (includes about 60,000 Sami), other European 8.9%, other 9.6% (2021 est.)
Norway has a long tradition of doing insane things in the snow, and ice, quite well, without a whole lot of fuss. Read about Roald Amundsen, their hero.
There is a book called "The Last Place on Earth" about Amundsen and Scott, which I highly recommend.
Norway is a very healthy country. I enjoyed my many business trips there in the 70's-80's. They wisely invested their oil money too, not spending like drunken sailors.
Speaking of the CIA Factbook, they not only have entries for all of the other countries in the world but also the United States.
Fun facts:
note: Denali is one of the most striking features on the entire planet; at 20,310 feet, it is the crowning peak of the Alaska Range and the highest mountain on North America; it towers three and one-half vertical miles above its base, making it a mile taller from base to summit than Mt. Everest; Denali's base sits at about 2,000 feet above sea level and rises over three and one-half miles to its 20,310 foot summit; Everest begins on a 14,000-foot high plain, then summits at 29,028 feet.
note: the peak of Mauna Kea (4,207 m above sea level) on the island of Hawaii rises about 10,200 m above the Pacific Ocean floor; by this measurement, it is the world's tallest mountain - higher than Mount Everest (8,850 m), which is recognized as the tallest mountain above sea level
Also, looking at the area of the various Great Lakes that are within U.S. borders, while Lake Superior is the largest of the Lakes, the portion in U.S. waters is smaller than Lake Michigan:
Major lakes (area sq km)
Fresh water lake(s): Michigan – 57,750 sq km; Superior* – 53,348 sq km; Huron* – 23,597 sq km; Erie* – 12,890 sq km; Ontario* – 9,220 sq km; Lake of the Woods – 4,350 sq km; Iliamna – 2,590 sq km; Okeechobee – 1,810 sq km; Belcharof – 1,190 sq km; Red – 1,170 sq km; Saint Clair – 1,113 sq km; Champlain – 1,100 sq km
note - Great Lakes* area shown as US waters
Salt water lake(s): Great Salt – 4,360 sq km; Pontchartrain – 1,620 sq km; Selawik – 1,400 sq km; Salton Sea – 950 sq km
I was not aware that Lake Pontchartrain is a salt water lake. You learn something new every day!
Lane Ranger- you are correct, and that balance between learning skills and having fun can be a tough one to achieve. You’re right, though, if they don’t have fun they won’t come back.
Young kids do care somewhat about the score, but WAY less than many parents do. I think about my youth, when the vast majority of our sports play was unorganized - and the various ways we’d adapt to the number and quality of players- close off right field, no rushing in football, no lifting in hockey, stopping halfway to rearrange lopsided teams… I better stop before I go into a nostalgia coma…..
As for Norway, they’ve always been good at winter sports (except for hockey, Mats Zuccarello notwithstanding)- being a tight knit high trust society has its benefits. I wouldn’t imagine 1988 was really any kind of watershed for the Norskies.
I’m guessing I would have liked you to coach my kids.
Seems like they have a few less things to spend their money on around the world, like we do. No worldwide military presence. Hell, they probably don't even pay for themselves in NATO. And they don't waste millions on Friends of Government projects, or pie in the sky Departments of Fluff. They don't have 9 Trillion dollars of debt. And they actually educate their kids on things they can use in real life, instead of pursuing gender transitions at 7 years old, or figuring out what pronouns they should be referenced by.
And while they are apparently working as a nation to do things active, we're actively working to put videos in front of our kids, so that they become one with the couch, while eating Cheetos and swigging Mountain Dew. Or figuring out which body party to pierce or which tat template is next and where to place it.
I find it ironic that their flow of funds comes from fossil fuels. I'm sure the EU is frowning on that, except that they all still need the fossil fuels to actually heat up their homes, drive their cars, and turn on their ski jumps.
Going back many decades to when I was a kid, I detected a sense of "Aryan Envy" in stories like these. Of course, the overwhelmingly white NYT writers and editors would never be racist against people of color (perish the thought!), but they sure do LOVE those 6+ foot tall, physically fit, flaxen-haired Scandinavians.
Masscon said...
It's just the constant denigration of our lifestyle and ways that grates. These types of stories are like catnip to NYT readers.
They won't admit it, but it's the ideal world of the NYT reader; lots of wealth in a country with a small, homogenous population that is overwhelmingly White.
If chess was an Olympic sport they’d have an additional gold medal.
Norway won 14 of the 33 biathlon medals, almost 40% of Norway’s total medal count. You might think the U.S. gun culture would produce great biathletes, but AR-15s make for lazy shooters. Plus, cross-country skiing is tiring for people who only know the gun range, deer stand, or duck blind.
"Young kids do care somewhat about the score, but WAY less than many parents do."
We always tried to win, but only cared about the score for about ten seconds after the game ended, IIRC.
Norway isn't an EU member state.
According to the great Mike Royko, Norwegians are the only ethnic group without an associated ethnic slur.
I remember the piece he wrote back in the early 70's because I am over 50% Norsk. Lefsa and herring doncha' know.
Re: Rehajm's claim that Norway is "monocultural": That may have been true in the past, but they have not been immune to Europe's importation of "refugees."
Yah, there's always someone quick to point this out, even back when they were 'only' 98 percent Norwegians. It's a relative term...and those immigrants cause much friction- they aren't going there for the free winter sports. That would seem to support the moniker...
Wait until the summer games when our trans-swimmers kick butt.
Norway has always done well in winter sports. The Calgary winter Olympics were an exception. Norway leads the gold medal count for all the winter Olympics combined by a good margin.
Money is not the main reason for the success. It just gave a boost to a culture that puts an emphasis on skiing. Skiing is integral to the Norwegian identity and up until recently was done by pretty much everyone, regardless of wealth, class or other factors. When I came to Norway to study at the university in 1980 they even lent cross country skis to foreign students so that they could better integrate. I took advantage of that, skiing on the free groomed trails here in Oslo that are accessible by public transportation and are lit at night. That's the case for most cities and towns in Norway.
King Harold V of Norway has birthday today. He's 85.
Following the death of his grandfather Haakon VII in 1957, Harald became crown prince as his father became king. A keen sportsman, he represented Norway in sailing at the 1964, 1968, and 1972 Olympic Games, and later became patron of World Sailing. Harald married Sonja Haraldsen in 1968, their relationship having initially been controversial due to her status as a commoner. The couple have two children, Märtha Louise and Haakon. Harald became king following his father's death in 1991, with Haakon becoming his heir apparent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_V_of_Norway
"great for everyone's health and well-being"
You mean, great for a small group of white people that got rich off oil, screwing Gaia while parading their white supremacy.
Norge's were known in the western frontier as square heads. Probably not to their square faces otherwise they might Go Berserk. Grannie made great krumkakes, the lutefisk not so much.
I think Norway started an upturn when Steve Van Zandt moved over to Lillihammer and got some good ole Americanism established there.
Norway isn't an EU member state.
Technically correct but in reality Norway has one foot and a couple of toes in the EU. Because Norway is a member of EFTA (a free trade association with the EU and a few small European countries) Norway has to abide by pretty much all EU regulations that relate to trade, such labeling and safety. About 50% of the regulations Norwegians live by are made in the EU without Norway having a direct say. In addition, Norway has to pay a large sum of money to be in EFTA.
Norway is also in the Schengen area which is a passport free zone that includes most of the EU and the EFTA countries. As a dual citizen, I'm very happy with this arrangement. With my Norwegian passport I can live, work and buy property in any EU country. When in any EU country, even as a tourist, I'm covered by the same health insurance that the citizens of that country have.
Norway is spending a lot of money using sports science to get the best performance out of their athletes. And they have the money to do it.
But I wouldn't exclude potential performwnce or revovery enhancing supplements of some kinds not known.
Generally speaking, when things defy statistics, there's a reason.
I remember reading An Old Captivity - about expedition to Greenland early Viking seafarers and their exploits,
- is a novel by British author Nevil Shute.
- Nevil Shute Norway was a popular British novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer.
Maybe they are just real good at cross country skiing and biathlon, because they have the right environment and there aren't really other local leagues that compete for athletes.
So you're saying that Norwegian kids don't spend 12 hours a day playing Warcraft?
If they can keep out the foreign invaders they will continue to thrive.
If not, they will sink like the US is sinking now.
I wish them well...
Small country makes the most of their economic, physical, climatic, demographic, and cultural circumstances and advantages to benefit their elite athletes and general population, followed by mass pearl-clutching and panty-wadding at Althouse, even suggestions that they are cheating, because statistics.
Or, we could fire Sarah Hirshland.
Norway's got a really decent sovereign wealth fund. It's getting bigger faster now that oil is on the way up.
Saudi Arabia's is good and popping up too. But then they're poor . . . . . . . so , there's that! Glad we can help them out. And we've got bases over there to protect them for reagional military threats. We're nice that way.
Diversity (e.g. racial) disparity, obviously.
Norway is what would happen if Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont was a country, and owned Exxon.
Norwegians don't bitch about global warming and wear their recycled paper environmentalist masks to EU meetings. That, and producing lots of oil, appears to be a winning combination.
Make America Norwegian Again sounds like a good campaign slogan to me.
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