Norway’s director of elite sport sounded a little hoarse when he answered the phone to CNN Sports. Tore Øvebrø said he had just caught a cold, but he admitted that his raspy voice might also have something to do with his cheering over the last two weeks.
“It didn’t help,” he chuckled, “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 done then. Norway stands on 18 golds – and 40 total medals – coming into the final day of action.
It’s now an indisputable fact: Nobody can touch Norway at the Winter Olympics. From 2018 in Pyeongchang through the Italian Games in 2026, the Norwegians have always come out on top.
A tiny nation of roughly five-and-a-half million people – about the same as the US state of South Carolina – has figured out how to keep beating countries like China (1.4 billion), the US (342 million), Germany (84 million), Italy (59 million) and Canada (40 million). Clearly, they’re doing something right, and perhaps some of their rival nations like the US could learn a thing or two from the Nordic champions.
It might come as no surprise that a Nordic country would excel in winter sports, but the truth is that Norway has been punching well above its weight in many sports for
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