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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___________________________________________
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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.