In Ingebrigtsen's Norway an all-season, all-round sports push

Hindustan Times

11 hours ago

Mumbai: Last month, a contingent of 200-odd Norwegian athletes and coaches assembled in the Spanish island of Gran Canaria for a camp. It featured the country's prospects for next year's Milano Cortina Winter Olympics from across all disciplines except biathlon.
This all-encompassing huddled base may only have been for athletes' basic training, but the model of cross-functional knowledge sharing is fairly unique to Norway and how sports federations operate in the country of 5.5 million.
'This model will not work in all countries, given the scale. It's unique to Norway – a sort of hub that brings athletes together and gets them to interact and learn from one another,' Tore Ovrebo, sports director at Olympiatoppen, told HT. Olympiatoppen is the Norwegian Sports Federation's elite sports programme responsible for Norway's Olympics and Paralympics preparation and performance.
The model not only ensured that Norway walked away as the top-performing nation from the last three Winter Games, but also with double the medals from the Summer Olympics of 2021 Tokyo and 2024 Paris (8 each) compared to 2016 Rio (4). The gold count spiked from nil in Rio to four each in Tokyo and Paris.
Eight medals are by no means eye-catching. Yet for a country with greater pedigree at the Winter Games, finishing as the 18th best nation at the Paris Olympics is noteworthy. India, for context, were 71st with six medals.
Ovrebo observes a trend vis-a-vis Norway and the Olympics of a few sports tailing off from Tokyo to Paris (like triathlon) and some making the world sit up and take notice. If athletics (two gold, one silver) stands out in that, Norway's spread in Paris also extended to handball, weightlifting, sailing, volleyball and wrestling. The country also flaunts world-class football, tennis, golf and chess players.
'Some sports have risen at a high level, and that has inspired others,' said Ovrebo.
What inspired Norway's all-round all-season sports push, ironically, was a dip in their pull at the Winter Olympics. In the 1988 edition, Norway did not win a single gold. 'A national catastrophe,' Ovrebo said. It
compelled the country to infuse professionalism in sports and replace the 'blazer people with training gear people' to run federations. Ovrebo, a rowing Olympian in charge of Norway's elite sports programme since 2013, is an example himself. Norway hosting the 1994 Winter Games also proved a catalyst in building a model that nudged more people into the sporting ecosystem and aided cross-functionality.
'Everyone started working together and established a system that is still working,' Ovrebo said. In the heart of that system lies over 9,000 clubs, where not only do plenty of kids spend time but their parents help out as volunteers.
'So, a very big part of our population is involved in sports,' Ovrebo said.
Children are encouraged to play multiple sports at a young age and not blinker down to sport-specific and result-driven mindset. 'If you specialise too early and start to see yourself through results, it can be difficult when results are not there anymore. We want them to excel, but not at a young age.'
It, of course, helps that Norway is a rich country, and sports, unlike say in India, is not a way out of poverty. Wealth helps invest in top-class sporting infrastructure, and corporate entities are equally eager to add to the pot.
'Most of our finances come from the business community. It has worked well for three decades, but we need to work hard to keep it up,' Ovrebo said.
As young athletes grow and narrow down their sport, talent in clubs and schools is identified through the Norwegian federation's regional centres, which start recruiting those in the 15-19 age-group into the junior national setup. Camps like in Gran Canaria are routinely organised but outside of that, athletes are given freedom to work with their own coaches. Ovrebo and his team remain in constant touch with the coaches for the athlete's roadmap and progress. Coach development projects also form a big part of their job.
Olympiatoppen houses a high-performance centre in Oslo that some elite athletes use occasionally, yet not frequently. What it does consistently provide is expertise in personnel like physios, doctors and trainers. 'We share our specialists with the various sports federations, which also makes it cost effective for them,' Ovrebo said.
It's a largely inclusive and in-house system, which doesn't force talent to hunt for training or coaching options outside Norway.
'We don't like that model,' Ovrebo said. 'Still, it's an individualistic judgement.'
Ovrebo and his team began work for the 2028 LA Olympics three years ago, when they first visited the next hosts. The planning process starts well in advance to complement the cohesive system. And, along the way when Norway produces Olympic champions in decathlon (Markus Rooth) and 1500m/5000m (Jakob Ingebrigtsen), it reinforces the belief in the model.
'You don't have to be from Ethiopia to become a long-distance runner. You can come from a little town in Norway,' Ovrebo said. 'We have the belief that it is possible to be good in any sport. We just have to work the right way. Then, magic can happen.'