Transcription
Ah, Norway. The land of the fjords, the Vikings, the social anxiety, and the excessive consumption of lip filler nicotine. Some say it's the greatest country on Earth with lots of money from oil drilling, fish farming, and the occasional guy named Magnus. But what if I told you that this beautiful country, which just happens to be my home country, is the most dominant sporting nation on the planet?
This is why Norway, with a population of only 5 and 1/2 million people, produces more Olympic gold medals per capita than any other nation. You might think that this relatively plain country, where people barely interact with each other and prices are similar to that of Monaco, would be relatively calm to live in. Well, for the most part, yes. But there are two things which bring the Norwegian people closer than anything else on Earth. One is our hatred towards Sweden, and the second, to many people's surprise, is watching other Norwegians play sports.
Now, of course, Norway is known for dominating heavily in the Winter Olympic Games, winning more medals than any other country four times in a row now. Mostly because of this guy. We're winning in cross-country skiing, alpine, skate, ski jumping, even biathlon, which you'd assume would be dominated by the US since half of it is shooting. Though we are also leading in a few other sports which many do not expect at first.
First up, we have arguably the best triathlete in modern times, which is Kristian Blummenfelt, boasting the highest ever recorded VO2 max in history of 101.1, which mind you is a record he took from another Norwegian athlete, which mind you he took from another Norwegian athlete. Safe to say high VO2 maxes runs in the family. But we're also dominant in beach volleyball, powerlifting, handball. We've got arguably the best striker in the world in men's football and a Ballon d'Or winner in women's football. We've got the greatest chess player of all time. Yes, chess is technically a sport, don't @ me on that. We've got sprinters, middle-distance runners, rowers, wrestlers, even weightlifters winning Summer Olympic gold medals. And we're even playing pretty well into uncommon Norwegian sports like tennis and even golf. And we even got this guy.
Okay, I'm done glazing my home country, but what is really the trick here? How does Norway seemingly have some top-level athletes in virtually every sport? Well, there are a few theories for how Norwegian sporting dominance actually came to be.
First is the Viking selection theory, which claims that Norway's long history of Vikings and warriors created great genetics for strength and endurance. Basically, those traits were more likely to get you home from battle in one piece, and considering they had a lot of children back then, only the best genetics would be passed down to the next generation. And then the process would be repeated. And yeah, there were definitely a lot of tales about big Vikings doing extraordinary things. And in fact, there was even an anime made about this, and if you know what I'm talking about, then you probably don't have any enemies.
>> Where is your sword?
>> I don't know.
Now, even though this sounds very plausible to some people because it's just evolution and then passing down favorable genetics based on your environment, it doesn't actually hold up too well considering less than 10% of the population back then were actual Vikings, and considering many didn't even kill and just stole and burned down houses and churches, most Vikings and warriors back then [clears throat] essentially died very young anyways. Like even if you were a much bigger and stronger guy, the difference it made in battle probably wasn't as big as we would like to believe. So, many often died well before they could ever pass down their own genes. So, I don't think the Viking theory holds up very well.
Another one though is the Norwegian lifestyle theory, where many speculate that the rugged terrain of Norway with lots of mountains and long distances between cities and villages meant that transporting people and goods required a much higher level of fitness back in the day compared to places like Germany and Denmark. And this actually makes a lot of sense considering most high-level athletes from Norway actually grew up on farms or out somewhere where they had to be very physically active from a young age, building a high work capacity before eventually becoming professional athletes. Norway also has one of the longest coastlines in the world if you count all of the islands. So, moving places was definitely not easy back in the day, and many people often had to row across great distances up fjords to transport goods.
Though hard terrains aren't exactly exclusive to Norway, most countries aside from the weird-sounding guys in Denmark have hills or mountains. So, with that logic, wouldn't people from countries like Austria, Switzerland, or even France be just as dominant in relation to their population?
But, the most plausible theory, and one I actually learned about while studying sports science in Norway, was the Norwegian athlete theory, which claims that the reason why Norwegian athletes are so successful is because they specialize their athletes super late, especially in comparison to countries like China where they specialized athletes from a very very young age. Take this guy, for example, the three-time world champion and Olympic champion in the 400-meter hurdles event, Karsten Warholm, or Karsten Warholm if you like cheeseburgers. Who you probably know from viral videos like this one.
Now, he didn't even specialize for the 400-meter hurdles event until his early 20s, as he used to be a decathlete, meaning he did nine more events and had to be good at virtually everything: sprinting, jumping, throwing, and even long-distance running. But, when he finally specialized in the 400-meter hurdles, which he was pretty decent at, he broke the world record in that event by the largest margin in decades and became the Olympic champion. And frankly, it is very common for Norwegian athletes and youths to compete in several different sports throughout their childhood and teenage years, only settling for a sport to specialize in once they're old enough to make that decision for themselves. Like how many cross-country skiers play football or do other endurance sports, or how almost every kid in Norway participates in some local sports team. In fact, over three quarters of kids between 6 and 15 are part of some random club. They usually play football, handball, or even track and field in the summer, then skiing in the winter, meaning they become very versatile and very well coordinated across many activities.
Whereas many other countries have a tendency to specialize children very early on. They make them compete with the goal of winning at the age of six. They try to make them into elite level athletes from a very, very young age, and they tell them to only do a single sport for the rest of your life because you are genetically prone to being good at that. And yes, this does provide good results, but it also shortens their sporting careers drastically compared to those who don't specialize as early, meaning a kid could end their career at age 18 and never continue long enough to become an actual professional athlete. And this is actually a well-documented concept in sports science. A couple years back, there was this massive Swedish study which took 1,026 football players who were sent to high-level academies to go all in on football at different ages. And they assessed whether or not early specialization actually led to higher-caliber athletes. And they found that no, actually it didn't. Early specialization only led to shorter careers. And it gave the athletes less time to find out what they wanted to do, which subsequently means that someone who went all in to become a football player at age 12 might have instead become a great long-distance runner or a sprinter instead if they had made that choice at 16 instead of 12. They would probably be more mature and realize their potential a lot better and ultimately find a sport which they would perform better in. Specializing early might in fact hinder performance more than anything, which has been noted in other studies that showcase the Norwegian model. They still want the kids to be active and even participate in sporting activities and competition, but they don't want them to put all of their fruits into a single basket too early, like many do in countries like China.
Now, it has to be said that early specialization can also maximize athlete performance if they stay injury-free and want to do that sport and end up growing well into it through puberty. But, it's often a shot in the dark to specialize an athlete who could still end up becoming much better at something else entirely, like how a kid might start doing gymnastics at a young age, but then they hit a massive growth spurt at 12 or 13 and suddenly become much less competitive. And a lot of sports which are played by early specialization also tend to see very much shorter careers. Like in gymnastics, the average age of a professional is around 20, whereas in track and field or even cross-country skiing, the average age is somewhere usually between 4 to 10 years higher.
However, there is one more thing which many never speak of regarding the Norwegian sport dominance, and that is opportunity. Being a relatively rich country on top of being built on voluntarity, the opportunity for sports in Norway is much greater than in most other countries, particularly because you can do both winter and summer sports in the same place and even at the same time if you want to, but also because people will go out of their way to do free labor and help kids prosper in the world of sports. Like most football coaches for kids between 6 and 15 are just the dads of the kids who just happened to play football themselves growing up. This guy, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who is arguably the greatest winter Olympian in history, spent the biggest part of his career being trained by his grandpa. And wouldn't you guess it that most of the funding for sports in Norway don't even come from taxes, but voluntary work and betting, where the betting companies actually donate all of their profits to local sporting clubs to help support them.
This is all on top of the fact that Norway is a leading power in the field of exercise physiology and nutrition, which means that the best athletes in the world can actually get proper follow-up once they eventually reach that [music] level. Whereas many places in the world, there is virtually zero investment into sports until people [music] get sponsors. Now, it has to be said that most athletes in Norway have to work alongside doing sports until they go professional. But, having that super well-built infrastructure on voluntarity definitely helps a lot.
So, maybe it's not the Viking genetics, but rather a combination of a sporting culture where people help each other grow into great athletes, where people volunteer at great lengths in order to help kids play football, or to create ski tracks, the non-profit betting system which brings money into the sporting arena, and high-level education in relevant fields on top of the country's great infrastructure.
Now, are there issues within the Norwegian sporting world? Absolutely. There is constant beef between state-sponsored athletes and private teams, sponsor contracts which don't align with their interests, and many argue that certain athletes are biased against, while other athletes get special treatments and are set up for success [music] just on the basis of their likeability and not their actual skill. But, even with these shortcomings, the Norwegian sporting empire has built itself into a strong position where athletes are winning in very competitive sports across most categories, despite being a country mostly covered in snow and mountains. And for the first time since I was born, we've actually qualified for the biggest sporting event in the world, being the football World Cup. So, you bet half the country will definitely be glued to their screens for the entire duration of that event.
But, what do you guys think? Have you played sports at a professional or a casual level yourself growing up? What do you think of your country, and what does it do differently than Norway, both for better or and for worse? And do you think the Norwegian sporting [music] model should be implemented into other parts of the world? Let me know what you guys think down below in the comments, and as always, thank you all so much for watching, and I'll see you all next time.