I think that’s a very interesting approach, and would certainly support it for my own kids - it certainly is reaping huge rewards for Norway on the podium. Congratulations to them!

Or they play sports most of the world doesn't and only comes around every 4 years.

Interesting approach indeed.

Now what do you make of the Biathlon performances of the Boe brothers?

I am having a hard time figuring out their true form right now.

How do you see the men's Biathlon relay unfolding?

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Only fools never change their minds and I'll never change my mind about that.

Very interesting, my only comment is that kids can generally tell who is faster, stronger, and/or better at most sports even w/o actual score keeping, i.e. it's not like they're blindfolded and can't see how their peers are doing. But still, the not keeping score concept is cool and i can see how it relieves some of the pressure/stress that some kids may feel to excel.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

It is interesting to see how this approach has been successful compare to the old days when I grew up. When i was 8 and started to compete in xc-skiing the top 50% got a prize and on the results you could find a red mark between the top 50 and the bottom 50. It was not good for keeping kids doing hard sports.
It is quite clear that today's approach is better.

Another aspect of Norwegian culture. You want the athletes to be able to coach themselves from around 18 years old. It is not common to get a program from a coach. Your coach is a person you discuss with.
You really see that in ncaa xc-skiing where hardly any Norwegians are coached by the university coach.

NMU has FIVE Norwegians & their team coach is also Norwegian. I'd have to disagree with you on that Halvard, they do get programs from the coach.

Ya, i bet being below that red line was soul crushing for some kids. One question i gotta ask though: does "no scorekeeping" include no timing at all??? IOW, was a guy like your 1500 m star, IIRC his name is Henrik Christianson, was NEVER timed during his formative swimming days of 5 or 6 up to age 12??? Coming from my U.S. perspective, that would be kinda weirdish, given that 6-11 yr olds over here get timed routinely every summer.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

 


+ 1

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"one eye doubles my eyesight, so things don't look half bad" John Hiatt

In the past wasn't it because of their extensive ped use? At least in cross country skiing etc...

Martin Johnsrud Sundby (one of the Norwegian 4 x 10 relay gold medal members in Korea this Olympics) is in fact by definition, a doper. He was busted in 2016 but served 2 months suspension for 35% over the limit of salbutamol, served his time only during the off race season months. This is a similar situation that Froome is currently fighting. Found this out from the TV commentators actually--it was news to me. Either way, you have to admit, the technique part of Noway's skiers is just nothing short of awesome, just very, very refined. I am not aware of others but don't know the history of Norway skiers getting popped. Maybe you are thinking of Finland? A large number of their national team was busted some years ago.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/skiing/2016/10/28/forget-sir-bradley-wiggins-the-real-scandal-right-now-is-happeni/


Lots of asthmatics...

+2

Having spent time in Norway with work, I'd say the outcome in terms of lifestyles is of far more interest than how the top 0.001% perform in the Olympics every 4 years. Nearly every Norwegian seems to have an active, outdoor lifestyle. Most people seemed to have at least some element of running, walking, cycling or in winter skiing on their commute. I'd see lots of sport going on after work in the evenings. And on a Monday morning when you asked people how their weekend was they'd almost invariably done something active.

I've travelled and worked in a couple of dozen countries and Norway stands out as the one where an active lifestyle is most embedded into the culture. Finland was second, though the motorsport culture there seemed to lead to more people who loved their cars and didn't walk anywhere.

Does their unique approach also involve a questionable use of the asthma drugs?

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

The skiers I have talked with this season from Utah and CU are not getting any programs. These are all American.
Usually the coach is more a person you discuss with. Jessie Diggins wrote about this after she visit Norway's national team one summer.

Sadly Norway like every western country is not getting fitter. You have a segment that is active, then a segment of the population that is not. Norway is just lagging other countries in Europe (luckily).
So while the top is getting better, the population as a whole is getting slower and fatter.
But your are right. It is easy to be active in Norway so Norwegians have no excuse.

You mean the drugs that don't actually do anything if you don't have asthma?

Buzzkill. Your story isn't as feel good. However, you are correct.

Here are some thoughts:
1. Seems the Norwegian way only applies to a few sports because they are rubbish in the rest. See their soccer teams, which is the third most popular sport.
2. If you look at the US, the best youth hockey states generally come from the NE quadrant. The best youth soccer and baseball states are also generally climate driven and dominate because they simply play that sport more.
3. The US produces quite a few half decent basketball players compared to the rest of the world. We keep score there.
4. The argument as to why the US is subpar in international soccer is because we exclude the innercity athletes due to expense. Don't know about anyone else, but I've never seen bands of African American teenagers skiing through Harlem. So we're excluding at least half the pool from playing. Hell, even the white kids generally don't ski much at all.

The above notwithstanding, the scourge of not keeping score at the younger age groups has firmly advanced in all US sports. I coach my daughter's soccer and basketball teams and the number one question I get from the kids during the game is: "Coach, what's the score?" The kids aren't afraid of the score.

Especially with Winter Olympics we should normalise population numbers by snow-days-per year or so. Or in the case of alpine skiing population by number of skiing resorts.

Once again alpine skiing: here in Germany we have a population pf 80m. However, the competitive alpine skiiing population is recruited mostly from only a handful of villages. We have almost no share of the mountains. No comparision to Austria.

I'm not saying the Norway isn't doing something better than other countries, apparently they can generate a good environment for the sport, but population numbers have to be put into context.

Don’t forget, we are talking about high performance sport, and a small country is running away with the medal count.

We are trying to isolate the “special sauce” to Norway’s success in winter endurance spthe same way 8 years ago how we dissected the training culture that allowed a small country like Jamaica to produce consistently elite sprinters...

Sometimes, the obvious answer is also the correct one.

Agreed, of course the kids can tell who wins / loses, etc., and that should never change. And you hit the nail on the head with your last sentence.

The de-emphasizing of keeping score / standings / playoffs / etc. at early ages is actually more to do with us, adults. We can't help ourselves in over emphasizing where our U10 soccer team is in the league standings, when what we should be focusing on is a) making sure the kids are having fun, b) helping them to improve their skills.

This change in this article Norway for New Zealand and Winter Olympics for Rugby. I would say it's more about history and role models?

Drugs?

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'It never gets easier, you just get crazier.'

I have admired many of the Norwegian performances, but I would be lying not to say that there have been such a wide array of strangely impressive Norwegian performances that I am skeptical about the dominance, particularly with the latest round of leaks from the cross country skiing blood test databases that very strongly implicates many of their athletes (and many countries) of blood doping and worse.

Most likely answer in a sport where the result is mostly dependant on physical condition rather than any element of skill.

Add them to the list:
Kenyan endurance runners
Jamaican sprinters
British cyclists


Bit different to nations where dominance could come from its culture and heritage : Japan/judo, China/table tennis/badminton, Cuba/boxing etc

Having grown up in the era where sports started to become more about everyone winning I remember being quite frustrated at time (I think I was an uber competitive child).

When I was in grade 4 the Ontario school system introduced "standards" for track and field day to award ribbons. It didn't matter if you were 1st you might only get a 5th place ribbon because you only hit that standard or you could have 5 children get 1st. I remember looking around being like why are we all getting the same ribbon.

The next year I moved to the USA and started in rec soccer. I was lucky to be on a very good team, and the referees would actually treat us differently to try and keep the game close. My parents quickly moved us to a club team an hour away, but not every family can spend 4 hours a night between driving to another city, sitting around during practice, then driving home to make dinner etc.

From a very early age kids know who is faster or what teams are better. In my opinion resetting the score or giving an medal to everyone is insulting to the kid/team that is better. Everyone has their unique talents I was terrible at art and music and never expected to win an art competition.

I do think there is a place for leagues of that don't keep score or offer equal playing time because I think it is important to get kids active, but there also needs to be opportunities for the more competitive.

I think a major change is that parents need to be better. Mine were fairly relaxed and weren't results driven. The parents that are just yelling at their kids the whole game to do better will cause more burnout than keeping score.

Drugs? Are you on them?

There is a TON of skill in XC ski. Very much like swimming. Not at all like cycling.

It might be subtle and hard to detect if you don't know anything at all about the sport, but it makes an enormous difference.

Anyways the wax techs are the real heros.

So Norwegian kids can't count until they are 13?

In all seriousness, my nephews are very close in age and are super competitive with each other. When they started throwing the football or kicking the soccer ball in the back yard their mom and dad enforced a no score rule, but the issue was, the kids knew how to count. They didn't completely keep score, but they knew which one was winning.

Same when they started playing in the mini-soccer, no score until age 10 or so. But talking to them after the game, they knew what the score was.

As someone said, its more of the parent and coach over-pushing the kids to be the best, yelling at the sidelines and making the sport not fun anymore.

This is a lame excuse for all of us other countries who have plenty of cold climate, lots of money and larger populations doing the same sports as Norway. US easily has more facilities than Norway at the sports that Norway is doing well at....downhill skiing, speed skating and nordic skiing (perhaps Norway has a bit more). Canada definitely has more facilities than Norway, more population who can access them, and equivalent or more wealth to do them. I'd say that the US has way more downhill ski/snowboard facilities vs any country in the world. Literally Norway does not have any proper size mountains for pure downhillers.

Besides all the allegations on this thread of Norway doping to wins (and I am sure they are just as doped as Canadians, Americans and Russians....sorry guys, it's not just the Russians or you are living under a rock...remember which countries Lance and Ben Johnson were from), Norway has just gotten more organized than their peer federations in Canada and US for many of the Olympic sports. It's not like our federations on this side of the pond don't have money, facilities, and a large population of genetic talent to pull from. We do. We just are not deploying capital in xc skiing, downhill and speed skating as well as the Norwegians with efficient programs.

Canada is winning plenty of medals in other sports (which I personally don't care about at all....the only sports I really care about, Norway is cleaning up).

The other factor for us, here in Canada is our media stresses the big pro sports, not these traditional endurance sports that Norway is cleaning up at. Kids get sucked into those pro type sports first. They don't see endurance sport on TV We have the same challenges in Canada in swimming in the summer games. Countries like Australia bat way above their population weight because they have better programs. Heck, we had LA Olympics Canadian 200IM+400IM gold medalist Alex Bauman go to Australia to help develop their program rather than him here at home doing that for us.

Anyway, here in Canada, we're spread thin with athletes in every sport summer and winter. Our society to some degree is good because all of us have choices in terrms of sport. Pretty well every sport that is played on the planet, we have a national federation and program. You want to play cricket in Canada, we have that. You want baseball we have that. Handball we have that. Luge, curling, field hockey, soccer, basketball....the list is endless. Our capital (coaching, money, infrastructure) is spread over all of those.

If I look at the Summer Olympic Medal count, Canada got 22 medals for 20th overall vs Australia at 29 for 10th. France was at 7th with 42. Norway was down in 74th place with 4 bronze medals. They relatively produce nothing at summer. France and Canada are much more balanced between in terms of medal production between summer and winter

Flip over to Pyeongchang now:

Canada 3rd at 21, France 6th at 14, Australia 19th at 3 (I picked Australia, because they can deploy their $$$ and people mainly to summer vs winter). Norway at 33

Next door to Norway, Sweden produced 11 medals in the summer and are 12th with 8 medals this winter. It seems Sweden, like Canada, tends to allocate its funding and resources across seasons. Sweden is generally a contender in many more sports than Norway as is Canada...we both will also finish just off the podium in many sports, but it does not mean no one in our countries are doing those sports...we're just spread really thin as a choice of our societies (both being rich countries with lots of facilities across seasons).

Maybe it is just so ingrained into American culture, but when my kids have played on developmental/fun leagues without scores they all still know who wins. They are kids they can count.

Not peeing on the notion. I think it is great. I think it starts a step before just not keeping score though. The score has to not be important in the first place.

In the current hockey league I told my boys to not do any fancy goal celebrations, showboating stuff they watch on Youtube. The coach told them to celebrate more. Go figure. I am a big fan of the idea of if you need to put some one else down to elevate yourself you are doing it wrong.

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Brian

while this might be a laudable approach, i don't think it has a thing to do with norway's prowess in nordic. norway is good in nordic for the same reason the US is good at surfing.

when i raced intercollegiately, english was by far the second language at the major races. americans were the small minority in higher level intercollegiate nordic skiing, at least from the rockies west, where i skied. my technique was okay, by american substandards, but it sucked compared to the flawless technique of norwegians and swedes. why did i suck? maybe because i'd first put my feet on a ski 2 years prior to going to college. nordic skiing is like swimming, technically: it will always be your second language if you're not born to it.

while i don't know this, i'd be willing to guess that if you look at all women's sports worldwide that are contested interscholastically (high school) american women kill it over all other countries. and on a per capita basis australians and kiwis and canadians are way up there. why? because these countries have created cultures of gender inclusion. america decided in the 1970s to create that culture. when i went to high school there was no women's track or cross country. in 2013 combined totals of girls participating in high school swimming and cross country overtook combined totals of boys on those sports.

for this reason, american women are now competitive worldwide in triathlon, soccer, hockey, running at every distance, swimming in every discipline, basketball, and i think american women just took a gold in nordic sprint relay. not because american women are genetically better. but because of a culture of access.

norway apparently made a cultural decision in favor of nordic, for some pretty compelling meteorological reasons. finland has the same conditions, and the same population i think, and during the fat of the 20th century wiped out norway in distance running. this was attributable to what? probably a culture that attached strongly to running that norway just didn't at that time have (maybe grete waitz, and the ingebrigtsens, will do for norway what paavo nurmi did for finland, and kick start a running culture in norway that finland seems to have since abandoned).

this isn't a criticism of norway. i wish we had norway's born-on-skis culture here in america, in the (few, and getting fewer) places we have snow.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Are you suggesting that drugs aren’t useful in skiing since technique is important??

I think it's a valid argument. Cold climate, money and population are irrelevant without a passion for these sports. Regardless, how many elite ski jumpers are there in the world? ~100? How about elite biathletes? ~75? Lugers? ~50? Etc. Even more popular sports like figure skating are tiny at the elite level. How many of these elites live in the US? What proportion of elite athletes in these sports live in northern Europe? How well funded are these programs vs. the USOC programs? Perhaps more than any other major sporting event, the Winter Olympics is chock full of extremely niche sports with extremely few elite practitioners world wide.

To be clear, the US benefits from this as well. The US has some of the few snowboard halfpipes in the world and lo and behold, the US does well in snowboard halfpipe.

Excellent response. Agree with everything you wrote. Simplistic assessments like in the article are not usually useful when looking at complex systems in society.

By the way, was fun to watch Diggins fly by everyone at the race today. Great to be there in person as the Americans dominated the women’s field...

I like this approach, especially if the goal is to keep kids in sport. It's hard to tell if someone will be an Olympian at 13 years old, heck, even 20 years old. Mike Woods was "too old" (~28?) when he got his Garmin contract and became an Olympian.

When I played hockey growing up, there was this progressive idea that a team that scrimmages more during practices would develop better than a team that mostly did drills. In skiing I often see clubs broken into tiers, where there is one group that trains 1 or 2 time a week and races occasionally, and another ("FIS") training 3-4 times a week or racing every weekend. As I have grown, I wouldn't want to be racing every weekend (or driving kids to races every weekend), but maybe there's something to be said about racing while training?

I wonder what other country does that???

Only true if someone has just started a sport and has enormous talent. Otherwise, if kids have been doing a sport like say swimming for several years, by 13 you can tell who is NOT going to the Oly, which would include about 99% of the 13 yr olds. Within the remaining 1%, only maybe 0.1% of them will actually make the Oly team. Sure, you have very rare exceptions like Rowdy Gaines who started comp swimming at 16 as a junior in HS and by 18 was winning State of FL championships (and FL is VERY comp in swimming) and by 19 or 20 he was setting WRs.

Actually, in swimming among kids who started swimming comp at 6 or 7, I would say you can tell by age 10 who has the potential to be great vs who will only be respectable to very good. The ones who really have "it" in swimming are pretty easy to spot, 'cause they're like 10 sec ahead of their local peers in the 50 free at age 10. :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Sweden doesn't keep records in swimming for kids under 13. Here in Canada we don't keep NAG records for 10&U swimmers.

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___________________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/...eoesophageal_fistula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_palsy
2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
Canadian Record Holder 35-39M & 40-44M - 200 m Butterfly (LCM)

I've coached and also been a parent on my son's soccer and triathlon teams since he was 4 or 5 years old and what I've seen confirmed a suspicion that I had. Yes, some kids are gifted and better than the others at an early age, but there's a huge chance they get burned out by the time they are teenagers if the sport is too competitive. On top of that, some of the kids don't show their abilities until they start to hit puberty anyway and then they start to pass all the awesome kids that were rock stars for a decade. With my experience with my own and my brother's swimming burnout, I decided to put him on teams so he gets the exposure, but make it OK to skip practices and games and races anytime something else comes up. It's turned out great so far; at 14, he's got a decade of training in soccer and triathlon and is quite good, and he can't wait to go to the next practice, game, or race. There's no burnout in sight so far. The other big factor is holding back a bit is keeping him far less injured than some of the other super-competitive kids. While they get sidelined, he keeps getting better. It's only better by a little bit, but it's compound interest, which adds up big time for sure.

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

Interesting, did not know that. Here in the U.S. we of course have NAG records for the 10&U kids, plus we have the "motivational time standards" to tell the 10 yr olds what level they're at, from B to AAAA.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

If you're implying the US, keep in mind that the two biggest sports in the US (football and baseball) aren't in the Olympics. The third biggest sport, basketball, is popular world wide and is in the Olympics. The fourth biggest sport, hockey, is more a Canadian sport, but also popular in Eastern and Northern Europe. I already stipulated snowboard halfpipe. What other relatively US-specific sports are in the Olympics? Can't think of any.

Then again...



https://www.triathlon.org/...riathlon_series/male



The vikings are certainly kicking the American men's collective asses in the sport of triathlon.

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

This system works for Norwegian in Norway. And it works quite well.
Of course the kids are keeping track of each other, kids do that when they play Overwatch.
But the "not keeping score" is more important for the coaches, parents and people around the kids, make them create a good environment for growth.
The goal is to let the kids keep doing the sport until it get more serious.

I have no problem with people not supporting this approach, think it is soft or even not liking Norway for political reasons.
I was just happy waking up today finding out that Norway had gotten silver in downhill women, bronze in xcskiing sprint relay women, gold in xcskiing sprint relay men and gold in team pursuit speed skating :-)

There is a general problem in both the U.S. and Canada, with too much emphasis on one sport too early.

It's FULL-ON sports specialization and almost year-round training and practice by age 10. The problem with this is that after a few years of this, there is a mass exodus from sport at age 13 - 15 - right when most coaches and sports development people say, is the time to start to get serious! Many of the potentially best kids just walk away!

Both overzealous parents and coaches are at the root of this.

There is a movement to try and make some changes - http://changingthegameproject.com/

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I didn't say that the U.S. practice of keeping records and standards for 10&U kids was necessarily the best practice, just saying that is what USA Swimming does. I certainly have no dislike, much less "hate", for Norway; I've had a couple of good friends from your country. I did ask one Q earlier though that never answered, and I ask solely for my info: are Norwegian kids not timed at all in swim meets before age 12??? Or do they just not allow swim meet competition until age 12??? Seriously, I am simply asking for my own personal knowledge.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

i guess its much more than that but i think its important that they focus more on senior performances and bellow.
it starts with oil and really smart investing of the government
people work to live and many people do voluntary coaching after the job
sport is important .
there is very good resources for sports

when i spoke to the norwegian tri nat team what the the most important aspect for their improvement in recent years they agreed it was the coaching.
interstingly one of the best norwegian female triathlete trains now in denmark as they hope the danish approach will work better for her.

My answer was more of a general answer and not to you personally. I can see it could easily be misunderstood, sorry for that.

In xcskiing you will get a time, but it is not ranked and by the sports law, everybody gets a prize.
You can find more information here, but you have to use a translater https://www.idrettsforbundet.no/tema/barneidrett/

Of course the kids take part in races, games. The difference is what is emphasized and how it is organized.
All sport in Norway (and most European countries) is governed by one sport association with overall rules and regulation. This is the umbrella organization.
Then all the different sports are under that umbrella.
This means that you will have many for the same rules and regulations not matter sport, where you live, etc.
If you play soccer, you are following the rules of the Norwegian soccer association that is under Norwegian sports association. This is no matter if you are 6 years old or playing in a 40+ league.

Where's that article you wrote some years ago on sports enclaves and how they tend to feed on themselves to elevate performances within the enclave and between competitive enclaves?

I think Nordic skiing in Norway is a perfect example of this. As is, since someone else brought it up, sprinting in Jamaica. And hockey in Minnesota.

you will find 25 articles that incorporate the word "enclave" on the main site, most are by me, and most are used with this concept in mind.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

U.S. swimming is a good example also as most if not all Oly swimmers came up through the USA Swimming club system. Not sure how many clubs there are right now but prob around 300-400 spread across the U.S. with around 350-400K total club swimmers ranging from age 7 to 37. Very good swimmers at age 10 become, if they have "it", great swimmers by age 18-19. The very good absorb the stroke techniques of the great more or less by osmosis such that virtually all top swimmers have pretty similar technique. I was watching the pro men's swim start of the Wanaka half earlier and one guy stood out as clearly not having a club swimming background, 'cause his arms were kind of flailing, not turning over smoothly. A fast turnover rate does not mean flailing. :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Top team sports in the USA, to varying degrees, are mostly minority sports in other areas of the World outside of the Americas.

If you hold a World Championship even though you are pretty much the only major country playing a sport, it still has cachet. Right?

Hi Halvard,

That Klaebo kid is incredible to watch. I saw from the WC results that he was crushing it on a world level, but I had never had the opportunity to watch him until that sprint final. The speed at which he went up that hill and opened the gap was fantastic to watch. Any idea why he is so good? Technique, Vo2, strength? All of the above? Would be interested to get more information on him as most of the articles are in Norwegian. He also seems like a really nice kid.

Thanks,

Will

I live in NH, my kids XC ski. I think the USSA should take the 10-12 states like NH, VT, ME, MT, CO, UT, WA, MN, WI, AK, MI, NY and build programs to develop skiing more carefully. In the northeast there is an organization called NENSA (New England Nordic Ski Association) that organizes clubs and races from age 5 through collegiate. They have coaching clinics, camps, races, etc to stay super organized for all ages.

My daughter is a top level HS skier and she gets to ski in four Eastern Cup races where you are skiing against all skiers from the D1 Programs like Dartmouth, Williams, St Lawrence, Colby, Bates, UVM, etc, as well as other top level high school skiers. A lot of the top high school skiers go to specific Nordic ski focused college prep schools like Stratton Mountain School, Holderness, and Dublin. Those schools have top level coaching and facilities.

As far as I know it is the only sport where a 15 year old can enter the same race, at the same time on the same course as a D1 college athlete. It is a great development program that has turned out about 1/2 of the olympic nordic team currently. If the other states with winters were half as organized we would be much further ahead in this obscure sport.

Is this approach to sports really why Norway is dominating? Seems like a lot of bullshit. I can buy any or all combinations of the benefits of a sports enclave, great training techniques, great coaching, doping, etc. I fail to see how not keeping score until 13 is THE reason why Norway is dominating.

Finland used to be able to compete in the xc disciplines. Then in 2001 the ski-federation based doping program was exposed and most of the national team caught (in the home world championship games, nonetheless, at least shows the program was not likely state run).

Since then it has never even been close. Now Norwegian ski federation (and fans) protects and argue even for their caught dopers (Sundby, Johaugg), many members of which hold major positions in the international federation etc.

Even as bright eyed as I am, hard not to be skeptical.

Wasn’t one of the big names from Norway busted ages ago? Like 90s or early 00s? I might be getting confused but remember someone big getting busted

Not a clever response, B. McMaster. In Canada we have 7 times more people than Norway and as much snow and hills and they are blowing us out of the snowbank with their performance. I wonder how much of their success is promotion of skiing, ski jumping, etc., from school and club programs that place such high emphasis on these sports? The best athletes in Canada tend to gravitate towards hockey at an early age.

Doesn't your response prove my point.

Canada has snow and cold but a large portion of your population doesn't give a sh-t about a lot of these sports.

We do all those sports in Canada (and fairly well). Little kids want to be Connor McDavid not Bjorn Daehlie. Success in these sports does not happen without great clubs, school programs, coaching and parents that participate in and watch the particular sport. When football eventually disappears in the U.S. there might be a shift to endurance sports. Good for Norway and good for Australia for being able to carve out their excellence in nordic sports and swimming. Nothing to do with keeping score, I feel.

You are very local in your thinking. In 2013 Dario Cologna beat Roger Federer as sportsman of the year in Switzerland.
Maybe you are not familiar with Cologna but in his market he is famous.

As far as I know, Canada just have one famous athlete - Ben Johnson...............

What are you talking about?? What does Switzerland have to do with Canada?? Canada has 100’s of famous athletes...they almost all play in the NHL.

that must have been wonderful.
I was cheering in front of the TV for Diggins in the skiathlon and the 10k free, she was absolutely redlining, for two 5th places.. brutal. So happy for her and the US women..

indeed all research suggests the key to making great endurance athletes is late specialization and de-emphasizing competitiveness at early ages.
http://evolutionaryathletics.com/...-endurance-programs/
https://sportfactoryproshop.com/...ure-in-3-easy-steps/

on the unrelated question of asthma meds, it's worth noting -
1. in 2008 I could find lots of research showing absolutely no benefit for healthy athletes from albuterol/salbutamol. That hasn't changed.

2. there is strong evidence that competitive x-c skiing causes asthma.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/...1/sms.12527/abstract
"Kennedy and some colleagues recruited 18 Canadian women who were competing full-time as cross-country skiers, and surveyed their lung inflammation over the course of a season using a technique known as sputum sampling.
What the team found was that, indeed, airway inflammation and injury increased significantly over course of a season in ways that were completely unrelated from the prevalence of colds and respiratory infections. By the end of the season, the cough was affecting the women’s ability to sleep and recover."

Swimming too,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC4653278/
"competitive swimmers show an increase in asthma prevalence, with a mixed eosinophilic–neutrophilic airways inflammation (77, 78), epithelial damage (46), and very frequent bronchial hyperresponsiveness (79). Further, increased levels of leukotriene B4 have been reported in elite swimmers (77), supporting the hypothesis that repeated hyperventilation challenges (80) together with exposure to chlorine derivatives can contribute to a peculiar inflammation mechanism that may support the theory of a phenotype of its own for the ‘competitive swimmers’ asthma’, a syndrome that may be potentially reversible when the athlete quits the competitive activity (65, 81)."

The Fins had quite the xc ski enclave

Question, but Canada DOES keep Provincial AG records correct? What ages do those start or do they include all AG's?

Call me when you take some Norwegians and subject them to scoring when compared to another group that you don’t score, subject them all to the same training blah blah...your conclusions are internet science at its best.

My response is to original poster. The conclusion is way off base.

Reply back mainly to Halvard as I had posted this earlier in this thread. Here in Canada, we have our athletes spread over EVERY SPORT SUMMER AND WINTER. We'll end up with ~42 medals between 2016 summer and 2018 winter games. The thing about Canada is that we are pretty well spreading our athletes across every sport on the planet. We have federations for all sports here, even though Hockey is kind of a national sport, we have good federations for Rugby, for baseball, for cycling, swimmer, weight lifting, judo, etc etc etc. Fortunately our country is rich enough, large enough in population for the wealth, and diverse enough to support all sports under the sun to different degrees of success. Aside from the podium, you will find a lot of Canadians posting top 5, top 10, top 15 in Worlds and Olympics across sports....we're not just nordic skiers, or speed skaters or downhill skiers (the bulk of Norway Medals).

Great on Norway for the culture that ends up building a decent size pyramid of participants for Olympic sports that give out a ton of medals. Probably the same group of girls who in Canada go into hockey in Norway they are skiers....hockey gets you 1 medal....skiing, I lost count how many medals you can win (keep in mind in hockey you literally can only win 1 medal, whereas in XC skiing your team can win multiple individual medals in a single event).

As for "which famous athletes outside Ben Johnson"....well since we are on a triathlon forum and talking Olympic Medals, we can talk about Simon Whitfield for triathlon, we can say Steve Bauer for road cycling (he's not our only cycling medal....Alison Sydor, Linda Jackson, Brian Walton, Curt Harnett, Clara Hughes...our women's team pursuit squad in Rio etc etc) and in swimming we have a decently deep swim medal haul, but my favourite in Alex Baumann winning 200IM + 400IM gold in LA....but most people today will point to Penny Oleksiak with 5 free/fly/relay medals in Rio and in running, we had Andre DeGrasse at Rio giving Bolt a good run (literally) and pulling in 3 medals. I THINK our medal depth over time in the sports that ST is built on is half decent. Not USA deep or Germany deep, but it's OK and deeper than Norway for summer sports and our climate is much more miserable than Norway for doing summer sport....but we don't really have an excuse for not being able to compete with Norway in Nordic....they just do it better than us....culture+program+money++++

Call me when you learn how to read English. Obviously, I was asking a legit question to realAB about Canadian record keeping. So, with all due respect, where did I even mention anything about scoring and science factoids in my question? I'm not sure what you even mean by "take some Norwegians..." Where are we taking them? Blah blah blah...internet troll.

One could go further in soccer and handball which are probably 2 of the 4 most competitive sports Norway gets beaten by Iceland which has 350 ooo inhabitants.

At the same time what is undeniable is that Norway is hugely on the up in sport.
And I guess one of the reasons like UK is that in before the wintergames at home they massively invested in the sport.
Fastest marathon runner in Europe blummefeld and some very good junior results lately in triathlon. There is something moving in the right direction. They also have very good cyclists as well

Halvard,

Coming back to which sports give out a ton of medals and what sports a country builds their participation pyramid for. Last nite I was watching the women's ice hockey finals between USA and Canada. Those women are at the top of the pyramid in that sport, but under them is a massive feeder system. Most of the women in that feeder system are locked in to playing hockey. They are not skiing, they are not doing swimming, they are not doing gymnastics. Hockey is all consuming and even after age 12 girls are playing it 10 months a year. They MAY be playing soccer in the summer but that's pretty well it. Both USA and Canada end up having a big piece of the same women who could be nordic skiing 1000% focused on hockey.

I coached youth Nordic skiing for 14 years and trust me, we tried to get the girls out of hockey and figure skating because we're not idiots and know they are awesome athletes, have great coordination, and superb endurance and power. Everything you need to be a good nordic skier.

So after last night, USA and Canada each got one medal for 20ish elite athletes, any of whom if developed earlier could have been on the path for or made our nordic ski team. But there is only one medal to show for this. We're not claiming that as countries we are dominating the Olympics although we are dominating Olympic hockey. On the medal count there is only 1 medal to show for this.

This one medal is the single premier medal for women's team sports in the Olympics....but you only have 1 to show for this. Norway was not in the women's final 8 and was not in the Olympic tournament, even though Norway has the climate to do well in this sport. Countries end up picking sports that their cultures support....they may have a lot of medals to show for it, or not many.

It is too bad my country is not as nordic ski crazy as we are hockey crazy!!!! Also I really enjoyed the Norwegian men take the gold in the men's long track team pursuit. Fantastic pacing and coordination. It was really well done.

Amazing. Reportedly systematic doping by a country's federation (Norway) gets one athlete banned from the olympics yet Russia doped (realistically) all of their athletes and they get to participate. Norway needs a better IOC lobbyist so that all of their 'medicated' athletes can compete against Russian athletes.

Huzzah to the women's team sprint team! Bread and Water.

Don't forget too that Norway tends to do well because the sports in which they excel reward a high proportion of medals.

Note that there are 4 individual biathlon events for men and for women, and 3 relay events That's 9 gold medals for one sport
In cross country skiing, there are 4 individual events for men and for women and and 4 relay events. That's 12 gold medals, again for one sport.

This isn't as bad as swimming, but still...

Now compare against 2 sports that Canada is great at.
Hockey: 1 Men, 1 women
Curling: 1 Men, 1 women, 1 Mixed

Norway is great at those sports, and does well in developing its athletes, don't get me wrong. But the medal table is just a tad skewed in its favour simply because those sports reward a high number of medals.

The two largest sports for girls and boys are football/soccer and team handball.
The national women's teams in both football and handball have had international success.
The men's football team sucks. But the men's handball team is not one of the best in the world.

These are the sports that most Norwegians kids are doing.
There are not that many skiers in Norway because endurance sports are hard.

You forgot the state where one of the ladies who helped win the first USA gold in XC skiing events...MN!

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

Same with the USA and Canada in freestyle both for skis and snowboard,
Half pipe, slope style, big air, arial, moguls, skicross,

And of course the USA and Canada as big nations with big economies can compete in all the sliding sports, luge, skeleton, bobsleigh. single, pair, couple, men, women, 4-man.
Same with short track speed skating, figure skating.
Norway dos not compete in many of the sports due to just being 5 million people.

you realize that norway has the same number of bobsled/luge tracks as the US? and if you take both the US and norway, add them together, you get what germany has?

what the US is good at is blowing things up. it is a very diverse place, with very little public help for its niche citizen endeavors (like sport). we are very good at (american) football. we don't give (as a country) 2 spits for bobsled. you are in the pac northwest, right? your closest bobsled track is whistler. your second closest is calgary. your 3rd closest is park city. your 4th closest is lake placid. your 5th closest is norway.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Fair point. My point though was that if you're going pick one or two sports to run up the medal tally, you've picked the right ones.

but it is the simple truth. How many Canadians are capable of winning medals in other sports if there wasn't a huge economic incentive to become a hockey player? And that is male and female (though I think you have to remove the word huge.

There is a guy on the bobsled team for the US named Sam McGuffie. I have little doubt that had he grown up in Norway he would have won a medal in something. Instead he toiled with football. Just an itzy bit too small to make it as an NFL player.

For every European country you will always find more money in soccer/football. So by following your logic, there are no real incentives for Germans, Swedes or Norwegians to do olympic sport. You can play football in you national league and make good money.
Every country in Europe has usually several level of football where you get paid quite a bit.

Norway: "Hey, I'm the worlds' tallest midget!"

This whole "unique approach to sports" might be the right mindset, but it has nothing to do with why Norway is topping the medal count.

Norway has invested in - and is, therefore, winning medals in - sports that the rest of the world doesn't care about. It's that simple.

And don't get me wrong; I would much prefer it if we (USA) cared about nordic skiing and speedskating. I'm downright embarrassed that we champion "leisure" sports like half-pipe and slopestyle.

But let's be honest: you are clearly just using this thread as a front door nationalist brag. Just realize that what you're bragging about is really not very impressive from a competitive standpoint.

Sorry Rocky, my response was for original poster. His conclusion that Norway is winning simply because they don’t keep score for young athletes makes no sense.

Have you told the Germans that biathlon is not popular? If so I am not sure they would agree.
A biathlon world cup race can over 25% market share in Germany. That is high for any sport.

4.66m watch the NBA all star game on TNT last weekend. And that is in a country with 330m.
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2018/02/nba-star-saturday-night-ratings-decline/


Below you can see how big biathlon is in Germany.
So by following your logic. Nobody cares about NBA.........

The German channel ZDF registered particularly high ratings.

On Sunday an average of 5.97 million viewers tuned in to the 4x6 women’s relay at 3 pm, representing an overall market share of 28.9%. In the morning, when the men began their relay competition, there were already 4.7 million viewers cheering them on. The overall market share at that time was even higher, reaching 33.6%. Among the 14-49 year olds a market share of 19.5% was recorded.

From Thursday to Saturday over 16 million viewers delighted in beautiful images of a stunning white winter landscape where top athletes gave their all on track and in the shooting range. The men’s and women’s pursuit races on Saturday were watched by 4.85 million viewers, representing a market share of 34.1% for the men’s pursuit and 28.2% for the women’s.

On Thursday and Friday 3.3 million ZDF viewers watched the sprint in Antholz, representing a market share of 25%. On all four days the ZDF alone broadcast almost 10 hours of live feed to over 25 million viewers. Many other countries reported comprehensively about Italy’s largest winter sports event. After all, a total of 33 nations had participated in the competitions in the Antholz valley.
http://www.biathlon-antholz.it/DE/213703/dream-ratings-for-the-antholz-biathlon-worldcup-on-german-television.php

Hey, I think Halvard is entirely entitled to make a front door brag about Norway racking up medals in XC skiing, downhill and speed skating. It's not like these sports are tourist sports with no depth of field. The point remains that Nordic Skiing like Swimming in the summer offers up a ton of medals. I don't see anyone complaining that the USA is racking up medals in swimming in a sport that pretty well none of the developing world cares about nor competes in (which is like 90% plus of global population picking a number out of the air). It's pretty impressive what Norway is pulling off here. But they are dominating the medal count in some sports leading to a perceived domination of the Olympics, but it is only perceived due to the lopsided medal allocation.

But what about world-wide market share? Again, on a grand scale, nobody cares about biathlon.



Logic???? You are using absolutely zero logic here. Using individual market percentage viewership is irrelevant. Look at absolute world-wide viewership. Or look at participation rates world-wide. How many people compete in Biathlon? NOBODY CARES ABOUT BIATHLON. So Norway wins the prize for being the world's loudest whisperer.

And using the NBA all star game as your example just eliminated any shred of credibility you had remaining. You're right - nobody cares about the NBA all star game - even NBA players.

I commend Norway's embrace of endurance sports. I wish the U.S.A. had the same embrace.

But the tunnel-vision nationalistic smugness that pervades so many of your posts on this forum is (1) so tired, and (2) clouds your rational discourse.

Now if Norway was dominating any of the worlds more popular sports like soccer, running, hockey, swimming etc.. then we may want to examine what they are doing differently

Haha - why are you guys still playing along with him

I would be "complaining" equally vociferously if someone (1) repeatedly trumpeted how great the USA is in swimming, (2) failed miserably in their attempt to hide their transparent nationalism, and (3) insulted everyone on here with a thinly-veiled and outlandish attribution of such success to a "unique approach" rather than the fact that the USA invests heavily in swimming.

interestingly, halvard hasn't mentioned norseman or responded to norway's nordic skiers use of drugs.

He’ Diverting because he doesn’t want to address the elephant in the room.

Naming stats like NBA all star etc, everyone knows that nobody cares about all star games etc. They mean nothing in terms of viewership.

Look at Canada USA in 2002, or Vancouver Boston Stanley cup, over 11 minion in just Canada alone.

The funny thing is that Norway should be 5-7 medals ahead, they had favourites in most of the free/slope style events but kind of bombed.

Maurice

what like basket ball, baseball US football...thats really bad form isnt it. Perhaps they need to call their championship a world series and call it a day

The NBA all star game is pretty weak. It’s about as popular as the Scooby Doo episode featuring the Harlem Globetrotters.

+1 on the drugs. Norway has a long history of questionable results. Halvard never even acknowledges that elephant sitting right next to him.

Its that way in Sweden too, doesnt help shit for thoose hockeyplayers.. ;)

Well you didnt miss that Island beat England and Croatia in soccer/football.Both are great teams and bigger countries..

Not thinking about swedes that flopped? Harlaut, Wester and Sandra Näslund, victor öhling Norberg?

Not in normal doses but it seems like bigger dozes actually do help according to new studies

yet more evidence for the 'unique' approach of letting kids play,

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...to-win-a-gold-medal/

"The results showed that both the medalists and non-medalists started practicing in their main sport before the age of 12. However, the medalists started training in their main sport an average of 18 months later than the non-medalists. (The medalists started at age 11.8, on average, compared to age 10.3 for the non-medalists.) The medalists also accumulated significantly less training in their sport during adolescence and significantly more training in other sports. This pattern of results held across a wide range of sports, from skiing to basketball to archery. "

I think most coaches underestimate the neural connections that your brain establishes doing other sports and activities that cross over and make athletes more intelligent when doing their core sport in ways that their core sports can't push their brains in terms of learning. While practice makes perfect in the core sport, perhaps the other sports enhance the overall neural plasticity that can they be applied back to the core sport to learn in new ways in the core sport because there has been different angles in terms of problem solving that can be applied backwards to the core sport. Take for example how a soccer ball spins, a baseball spins, a football spins, and how a tennis ball spins. You can still do a "knuckle ball" with all these balls with the ball floating through the air and not spinning and dropping suddenly as the speed changes and lift and drag around the ball changes. If I played goalie, or catcher or am on the other side of the tennis court, I now have different knuckle ball experiences being at the receiving end and will have a different set of velocity/size/pressure scenarios on multiple projectiles, which allow me to just eyeball that projectile coming towards me and do the right thing, but because of the diversity of my data set and my ability to do inference on my learning models and make better decisions than the guy beside me, who as just been doing the core sport.

I'm just using the example for convenience, but look at the snowboarder world champion who came from seed place 26 in the Super Giant Slalom and took the win from the pure speed event women. Don't tell me that her snowboard coordination did not come into play vaulting her past every SuperG athlete.

All those girls who came from figure skating to my group in Nordic Skiing were just the best athletes to teach.....you explained it once and they got it. If I got a guy off the track team, the transfer was not so easy, but if I got a kid would could run a 16 min 5K damn right I was going to try to make him a better technical skier, because as a coach I knew I was playing with an awesome engine and super power to weight ratio. Of course the track coach wants that kid running indoor track, not mucking around with me on skis, the figure skating coach wants that kid on skate, but does not realise I am giving her 3-4 minute endurance engine a massive boost for her figure skating long program. Meanwhile the soccer coach wants his kids indoor soccer, but when she's on my nordic, team, I am jacking up her 90 min game day endurance, I am improving her coordination at speed, improving her balance and spatial awareness and giving her other aspects of work ethic that she will take back to summer soccer.

But every coach things his/her sport is the most important sport on the planet and does not accept that the athlete may go away and do other sports and gain skills for the core sport that may not be so easily enhanced inside the core sport....and so it goes.

OK, now that everyone has beaten up on Halvard about Norway, as a Canadian, I should self admit that unlike Norway who is generally racking up lots of medals in relatively cheap winter sports like XC skiing and speed skating, Canada, we're going nuts racking up medals in sports that no one can afford to play. Probably the "cheapest" sport where we're getting medals is figure skating and that sport costs an arm and a leg. All those freestyle and snowboarding sports even most upper middle class families in Canada can't afford those.

I ran the Jackrabbit program for kids 4-13 years old at http://www.kanatanordic.ca for almost a decade. We would have ~150 kids in our program each year and almost all the parents were in one of three categories in terms of putting their kids in our program:

1. Want to ski, can't afford downhill or snowboard. It's just not in the family budget
2. Don't want to spend all winter sitting indoors in an arena for hockey of figure skating
3. Want their kids to do a winter sport (vs swimming, dance, basketball, indoor soccer) and can't afford any other winter sport.

I think Norway's achievements in these olympics are being undervalued on this thread. Those guys are doing something right in the sports I want Canada to win at (and I get that no nation is immune from doping, but all of our countries likely have the same percentages more or less....it's not like 37 of their medals are any more doped than 28 Canadian medals...we all probably have similar density of dopers vs our general athlete population).


OK, I am going back to watching snowboarding and ski cross for the next 17 minutes before the men's nordic skiing 50K mass start event and the speed skating mass start events. I love those and probably the Canadian results will be slim...but go Canada!



Dev

I was in an alpine ski team from age 7 to 13. There is a limit to the time you can spend on skis at that age. You have to go to school and going to ski takes its time. So in the Winter snow times were on Wednesday and Friday afternoons and Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 4pm. During summer de would go to the glacier for four or five days at a time. But the rest of the training (in summer and Winter) was spent doing cross training.

I think we were very versatile and it helped out skiing. In addition to strength training we also did balance and jumping and agility drills. But we also did other sports like biking, running, climbing, canoning, squash, soccer, Hockey, wrestiling etc. I always think being in a ski team in my youth now helps me in other sports (endurance). And it instilled a habit of being active everyday.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

Norway's achievement are not being undervalued. The pushback is just a natural reaction to the nausea invoked by Halvard's incessant jingoism. It's the same (for me, an American) when numerous people on this forum and elsewhere are so pro-America.

But I totally agree with you on your second sentence. And I agree with you on points you've made in prior threads - months ago - about the overall degradation in health in North America.

I have four kids and I wish they wanted to cross country ski. I was a young teenager when I was introduced and I thought it was something really special. The connnection with the woods, the thrill of even slight downhills on skinny skis, the satisfaction of sweating buckets even when it was below freezing. But American kids now want to head to the slopes and "hit the half pipe". And then take a 2-hour lunch to down a cheeseburger or chili dog (I can remember skiing non-stop, eating a brown-bag lunch on the lift in order to fully amortize the cost of the lift ticket). Is it just laziness? Is it wealth? Is it because the half pipe affords more opportunities for cool media that they can post on Instagram or Snapchat? Whatever it is, it's alarming.

So Norway has done something right. And I think that is a very wothwhile discussion topic. They are a much healthier nation. Is it because of better parenting? Is it because oil wealth has afforded shorter work-weeks, more leisure-time? Is it some innate desire to be fit?

I don't know. But I do know that my kids have a minimum PE requirement in school and can satisfy that requirement with cheerleading, or sport stats keeping, or being on the media/sports reporting team. Or a Doctor's note. What the fuck?

I also know that my kids want to play racquetball today (great!), but they want to be driven to the facility, which is 1 mile away. What the fuck? Who drives 1 mile???? But when I suggest they walk the mile, they immediately retreat to Instagram and Snapchat.

 
I also know that my kids want to play racquetball today (great!), but they want to be driven to the facility, which is 1 mile away. What the fuck? Who drives 1 mile???? But when I suggest they walk the mile, they immediately retreat to Instagram and Snapchat.[/quote]
Who bought them the electronic device so they could have access to instagram or Snapchat?

Weak, easy cheap shot. I figured someone yearning for a lazy win would go there. You don't have kids, so I give your comment a fat zero.

I took my son back to Norway to visit family. We stayed at my dad's house and I took my son to my old elementary school. My son was so happy since he could play on the climbing wall, use the different slack lines and of course use the trampolines. Yes all of these were in the school yard free to use for the kids.
By the way, this was a normal public school (nothing fancy I grew up in Drammen).
Will kids injure themselves falling down from the slack lines, yes of course. It is part of growing up.

It is interesting to be a part of two cultures. You learn a lot and you get challenged a lot :-)

I totally agree with you on multiple sports participation. My daughter's are 12 and 10. The pressure to specialize is already starting from local club teams. They've played multiple sports over the years and I believe it's made them better all around athletes. Even though they've seemed to settle on two primary sports each (basketball and volleyball/ basketball and lacrosse) every time they move on to the next sports season they are better, stronger and more skilled. Both have participated in the school running club as well and have done well in 1 mile XC races.

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Formerly DrD

So my thoughts at the end of the tourney....... i'd say the 3 best all round winter sports countries are easily Germany, Canada, and The States

Norway gets almost all their medals in Nordic stuff, and Netherlands gets ALL their medals in Long Track - the other 3 are a total mixed bag.

Which underlines that Iceland is by far the most remarkable sport nation at present

Do you have a link to those studies. Cheers

And Switzerland, with a population of 8 millionste?

It was quite a good olympics for us. One Highlight was of course Darios Hattrick.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

The big question is why is the USA not good at the only sport in the winter olympics where you both can carry and shoot a gun, biathlon?

Because you can't use assault rifles there.

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Need more W/CdA.

Also you would need to get stiffer skis for the additional weight of the assault rifle or the camber would drag in the snow and you'd be as slow as molasses and off the back.


Also no matter how you cut it, you have to include Russia in the group of top winter sports countries. Doping aside, they have a huge population base doing all the winter sports and their society is not as affluent as those on this side of the old Iron curtain. Canada only really moved up in the medal standings in the recent rounds of Olympic games because of all the sports added where you need to be ultra rich (think all the sports where there is ski lift involved and are not part of the traditional ski sports from circa 1968). I do hope that the Russians who took 2nd and 3rd in the 50K were undoped.

I guess Bolshunov is going to have many battles with Klaebo in upcoming years. He is big, I mean, really big for a cross country skier, powerful, can sprint and go distance. Next world championships, with Ustiugov back in action, the Russian relay team is gonna be deadly.

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Need more W/CdA.

It makes me sick to see Russian XC skiers out there. They have been consistently doping since 2002, as far as we know. Not for one second do I think their performances are legit. Kudos to Alex Harvey for calling it out. I hope he doesn’t end up like Beckie, having to wait 2 years for his medal.

Bolshunov comes out of nowhere in December and starts winning. No. No fucking way.

This kind of feels like Brigitte McMahon coming out of nowhere in 2000 and taking the gold medal from Michelle Jones in Sydney. Honestly, I hope this is not like that. While we are joking that Alex might get his piece of metal in a FEDEX package, it was tough to take the medal ceremony for the 50K and 30K at the closing ceremonies and seeing him sitting in the stands after winning the 50K at World's last year.

BUT, I think Alex blew the race by simply not going with Nistanen and sticking back playing poker with Sundby. Alex should have gone with Nistanen and marked every move....or Alex just did not have enough headroom to go with Nistanen and chose to pace and keep the effort steady. If this was a protour hillclimb, he could do like Froome and stare at his powermeter and just know exactly what pace to go. In skiing, with tactics, ski changes, and changing weather, he did not have that luxury. He let the winning move go and then had to play poker with the Sundby crew with no one wanting to do the work to pull everyone back to Nistanen and be fried for the sprint....so they kept playing poker with each other until suddenly they realized that Nistanen was so far gone that they had no chance to close.

So we can cry over potential Russian doping, but primarily, I think Alex blew the tactics

like ITU age-group 'world' championships, it's just the fastest of the rich competing..

downhill - find a snowy hill, go down it as fast as you can. Simple (but not easy), accessible to anyone with snow.
nordic - find some snowy woods, go through them as fast as you can. Ditto.
slopestyle big air skiercross boarding - what is that anyway and how much ? ! does it cost to build the course.. bah humbug.

biathlon with assault weapons - the Top Gear guys did a car-based biathlon once where Jeremy Clarkson used an assault rifle, still got well beaten by the guy with a single shot rifle.. ha

I'm a horrible person but watching the perfect 15yr-old Russian girl beat the perfect 18yr-old Russian girl in figure skating, via the 10% bonus for second-half jumps - I immediately thought of the Russian doping scandals. More strength from doping allows better jumping on less tired legs. Though there is also the question of strength-to-weight ratio, which is at its maximum for women in pre-teen girls - Zagitova might have come by that honestly.

watching the Olympics anymore is an exercise in faith and the willing suspension of disbelief..
"a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

https://www.idrottsforskning.se/...e-och-mer-explosiva/

In Swedish unfortunately

Ah ok. I agree. They are doing great in some sports. Norway probably claims beeing part of that too though ;)

Cheers
One thing I wasn't able to see was what do they consider a high dosis they talk about 200 mg a day but I can't see if that's what they used in the study. ( does it say somewhere)
Also they talk about improvement but I could not see the range

I understand that asthma is common but this study would suggest the allowed max level per day need to valve decreased somewhat.
At lower level there is no improvement and iam fine with that. But iam not fine if there is improvement and it's pretty obvious that's what a lot of people do.
It needs to be more looked at.

After watching the women's 30k, I had to look up info on Marit Bjorgen. She absolutely dominated that race from start to finish. Not only that, she appeared to compete in almost every other X country race available.

I do not know how to load images here but, of the ones I found of her on Google Images, she is a VERY muscular woman. Her arms look like a professional bodybuilder. Also, on her wiki page, it mentions she was criticized by a Swedish racer (in the past) for taking an asthma medication yet never having been diagnosed with asthma. I really hope she is not a doper because I loved seeing an almost 38 year old lady dominate the field the way she did

800 microgram Salbutamol every twelve hour and 1600 in 24 hours. So that´s the level they have tested. Muscle strengh and explositivity are boosted. How much is unclear.
In the article they also accusing Sundby and Froome for taking advantage of the high limit values..

I dont think he was in that shape to be able to follow. That finnish guy Niskanen is a beast in classic skiing. All other guys including Sundby and Cologna(who was in great shape) wasnt able to follow. One russian guy was close but still wasnt able to follow to the very end. Very unhappy with swedish male team but seems to be partly the useless skis
I like Harvey though seems to be a really nice guy.