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