{"id":532417,"date":"2026-07-04T08:34:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T08:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/532417\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T08:34:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T08:34:18","slug":"norway-is-dominating-sports-from-athletics-to-soccer-what-is-behind-its-success-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/532417\/","title":{"rendered":"Norway is dominating sports from athletics to soccer. What is behind its success? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

This would normally be that time of year when the entire athletics world is marvelling at the superhuman feats of Jakob Ingebrigtsen<\/a>. Ever since breaking on to the international stage in 2018, winning two European gold medals for Norway<\/a> at age 17, Ingebrigtsen has been one of the most dominant forces in global middle-distance running.<\/p>\n

There has been the occasional championship blip \u2013 his crazy front-running tactics over 1,500m at the Paris Olympics<\/a> being the prime example \u2013 but his otherwise athletic audacity and consistency have been the envy of the rest of the world. <\/p>\n

So much so that most middle-distance runners now imitate Ingebrigtsen\u2019s approach to training and racing, as recently detailed in The Norwegian Method Applied, published last month by Norway\u2019s two-time Olympic runner Marius Bakken. Anyone for a double threshold run?<\/p>\n

Sadly, Ingebrigtsen has yet to race this year, as he continues to recover from surgery on his Achilles tendon at the start of February. At 25, he\u2019s still got ample time to add to his 41 championship medals. Besides, Norway has plenty of other star athletes to follow this summer, including Henriette Jaeger, the 22-year-old now leading the way in European women\u2019s 400m running, and 400m hurdles world record holder Karsten Warholm.<\/p>\n

\"JakobJakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Photograph: Hannah Peters\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Some of this came to mind when reading how many, particularly in the US, are marvelling at Norway\u2019s progress at the World Cup. The New Yorker ran a 2,000-word profile of Erling Haaland<\/a> last Tuesday under the strapline: \u201cNorway\u2019s hulking striker brought his country back to the World Cup for the first time in almost 30 years. How far can they go?\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether or not Norway can get past Brazil at New Jersey\u2019s MetLife Stadium on Sunday, part of the marvelling is at Norway\u2019s apparent global sporting prowess as a whole \u2013 far beyond the World Cup and indeed the likes of Ingebrigtsen.<\/p>\n

\u201cErling Haaland, Norway\u2019s large, maniacal striker, has several exceedingly Norwegian traits,\u201d Zach Helfand writes in the New Yorker. \u201cHe sometimes exercises by chopping wood in the forest. He consumes six thousand calories a day. (He\u2019s fond of beef heart.) After training sessions, he drinks raw milk … He has flowing blond hair, often compared to a Viking\u2019s. He brings the intensity of a raiding party to the sport. Haaland scores goals at a higher rate than almost any soccer player ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not all a blindly sporting fascination, Helfand also noting that \u201cNorway is one of the world\u2019s wealthiest countries, with the world\u2019s largest sovereign wealth fund, mainly thanks to its oil reserves\u201d. Money invariably helps in the sporting development of any nation, although it\u2019s rarely enough to swear by.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Norway are one of the most exciting sides at the World Cup, spearheaded by Erling HaalandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

At the Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina earlier this year, Norway topped the overall medal table with 18 gold medals, 12 silver and 11 bronze \u2013 ahead of the USA (who finished with 12 gold, 12 silver and nine bronze). Norway\u2019s population is 5.65 million people, while the USA have 342.3 million to draw from. You do the math.<\/p>\n

Norway\u2019s Johannes H\u00f8sflot Klaebo also won an unprecedented sweep of all six cross-country skiing events, bringing his overall gold medal tally to 11, having won five before. Only Michael Phelps has won more gold medals in Olympic history, winter or summer Games.<\/p>\n

\"NorwegianNorwegian skier Johannes Hosflot Klaebo. Photograph: Marco Bertorello\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

US running coach Steve Magness also addresses the subject this week in an article titled \u201cDon\u2019t keep score: Norway\u2019s sporting success in youth sports and the World Cup\u201d.<\/p>\n

Magness is speaking from experience here, given there are two chapters in his 2025 book Win the Inside Game in which he evaluates the Norwegian and US system for developing talent and motivation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Norway\u2019s youth sports,\u201d he writes. \u201cEveryone gets a trophy. No keeping score until 11. No national championships until 13. Motto: \u2018Joy of Sport for All\u2019. They let kids be kids and it works …\u201d<\/p>\n

Magness also notes that Norway\u2019s football association\u2019s entire motto is \u201cas many as possible, as long as possible, as good as possible\u201d. This is also reflected in their coaching style, which he says varies based on sport and is \u201cgenerally taking advantage of a more modern ecological approach\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also makes the point that instead of the old-school football coach dictating and demanding, doing his best job of imitating a drill sergeant, Norway and other Scandinavian countries prefer \u201cmore constraints-led approaches\u201d \u2013 with more of an emphasis on play, exploration and varying the game dynamics.<\/p>\n

One of Norway\u2019s leading winter sport coaches, Trond Nystad, also told the FasterSkier website last year that Norway\u2019s athletic success doesn\u2019t start with medals or podiums. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe model of Norwegian sport is to have as many kids as possible, for as long as possible, and try to make them as good as possible,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s about being a champion of the world, not a world champion … the focus is on learning, mastering things, having fun, not on winning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given Ireland\u2019s approximately similar population size to Norway, there may be some lessons in all this when it comes to advancing our own global sporting prowess. Particularly given the perception that, as a sporting nation, things can sometimes get overly competitive at too young an age, or indeed that some sporting prospects are simply specialising too soon. <\/p>\n

Historically, however, this has done no harm when it comes to punching above our weight in certain Olympic sports, namely boxing and rowing, and more frequently in European athletics.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also true that there\u2019s a part of our own sporting prowess that can never be measured on the global scale, but on the almost half a million people who will go through the turnstiles in Croke Park over the next four weekends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This would normally be that time of year when the entire athletics world is marvelling at the superhuman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[28468,61,60,25573,112,23196,4018],"class_list":["post-532417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-erling-haaland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jakob-ingebrigtsen","tag-sports","tag-winter-olympics","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}