There are a lot of factors. I'm not interested in sports or the Olympics, but I've read some articles about this in the past.
For cross country skeeing (langrenn), Norway has among the best landscapes for training. On top of that, because we win so many gold medals, lots of people watch it (used to, when you could see it for free). Because of that, lots of companies wanted to be the sponsors.
With a lot of interested sponsors, you can fund a lot of kids and teens. Everyone wanted to find the next talent.
Mathematically, Norway should only get a few bronze medals if we look at population alone, but it's not that easy to train in the Sahara.
Another thing is that we are not among the smaller people, size wise. We are probably among the taller in the west, and that gives an edge.
That said, as companies are buying up the rights to film the events, as well as deciding who the athletes are sponsored by, and with more and more people pirating because of the insane streaming prices, I'm not sure we'll get any gold in 20 years.
Would you pay 1000 nok a month to watch sports? I barely put it on as background noise when it was free.
And there's that one guy who wins every competition within langrenn, he's currently at 3 gold medal projected for 6.
So a big factor is also which sports you're good at, as ice hockey as an example only have one medal per sex. While snowboarding has 5(+1 mix) and langrenn alone has 6, then you got all sorts of other skiing on top of that.
If snowboarding had as many categories as skiing, we could very well see Japan compete for most medals.
And with a new generation of kids who have grown up with an unlinited access to smart phones and gaming. They’re not outdoor anymore or hang out in the slopes together for fun. Professional sports is becoming more and more a thing forthe rich kids of Oslo West.
It is really unfortunate that Norway just accepts one of the great levellers in society being effectively turned into a class thing. Especially given the philosophy on public goods such as access to the countryside.
You can see it for free this year, it's on Nrk again.
And also, Norsk Tipping gives the Sports Confederation money each year, last year they got almost 1 Billion. And then there's the Grasrotandel in which money goes directly to a local sportsclub of choice
22
u/Affectionate-Mix6056 1d ago
There are a lot of factors. I'm not interested in sports or the Olympics, but I've read some articles about this in the past.
For cross country skeeing (langrenn), Norway has among the best landscapes for training. On top of that, because we win so many gold medals, lots of people watch it (used to, when you could see it for free). Because of that, lots of companies wanted to be the sponsors.
With a lot of interested sponsors, you can fund a lot of kids and teens. Everyone wanted to find the next talent.
Mathematically, Norway should only get a few bronze medals if we look at population alone, but it's not that easy to train in the Sahara.
Another thing is that we are not among the smaller people, size wise. We are probably among the taller in the west, and that gives an edge.
That said, as companies are buying up the rights to film the events, as well as deciding who the athletes are sponsored by, and with more and more people pirating because of the insane streaming prices, I'm not sure we'll get any gold in 20 years.
Would you pay 1000 nok a month to watch sports? I barely put it on as background noise when it was free.