Pop quiz: Name the country that won the most gold medals at the past two Winter Olympic Games. If you guessed a traditional powerhouse like Germany, Russia, or Canada, you’re wrong. In 2018 and 2022, Norway dominated the medalist standings, led by stout performances by the country’s cross-country and alpine ski racers. And at the most recent Games, Norwegian athletes won 16 gold medals, the most ever won at any Olympics. This, even though Norway has a population of barely more than five million people, about 1.5 percent the size of the United States. In Beijing, Norway only fielded 84 athletes. By contrast, the US sent 224 athletes and won only eight golds (and 11 fewer total medals than Norway).
Sure, Norwegian winter athletes benefit from half the country being in the Arctic Circle, helping to produce snowy conditions for most of the year. But the success of Norwegian skiers is also due to the unique way Norwegians are raised and how they approach sports. “Norwegian children are taught an appreciation of the outdoors from a very young age,” says Axel Rosenberg, a lecturer at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. “Even young children take their naps all bundled up in warm clothing in their strollers outside.” Most children start skating around town on a plastic pair of skis that strap to their snow boots not long after they can walk.
Because children spend so much time outside, they begin developing strength and skills that kids in other countries might not. And unlike in the US, where there’s an emphasis on competition, in Norway there are rules in place to make sure athletic development is focused on skills acquisition and having fun.
In 1987, Norwegians ratified the Children’s Right in Sport (it was updated in 2007). Among its main decrees is that all kids must have access to sports, no matter the child’s family’s ability to pay, and that the main purpose of sports should be to gain skills, make friends, and have fun. There’s nothing in the document about winning. In fact, the Children’s Rights in Sport explicitly bans children from being ranked, keeping score in games, or being timed before the age of 11 (and no child is allowed to compete in a championship event until they’re 13).
“That’s a big reason Norwegian athletes are so successful,” says Felix McGrath, a former member of the US Alpine Ski Team who coached in Norway for 20 years. “There are plenty of kids who are small and less developed at a young age. In the US, those kids get beaten and it’s demoralizing, and they end up quitting before they get bigger and stronger and are ready to break through. That doesn’t happen much in Norway because, by the time they’re being timed or keeping score, they’ve reached an age where their bodies and minds have matured enough to compete.”
McGrath’s son, Atle, was raised in Norway and grew up adhering to Norwegian principles. He’s now racing on the World Cup tour for Norway and has scored five podiums, including two wins. Felix isn’t sure he’d have the same success if he’d grown up in the US.
But OK, your child is trying to become a great skier in the United States, not Scandinavia. How do you implement the Norwegian way in a very different culture? “Let them be kids,” advises McGrath. “My kids walked to school their entire life. By third grade they walked alone. They would walk a mile or farther. On the way back they might run through the woods and climb trees and throw rocks. This is how kids develop.”
McGrath suggests that American parents let their kids do the same, noting that there has become almost an aversion to free play in the US—“a fear of getting hurt,” he says.
Same goes for skiing. Freeskiing—jumping off rollers, skiing through trees, having fun in the bumps—helps develop the type of balance and agility that forms good skiers. “It also helps instill a real love for the sport,” says McGrath.
That love shouldn’t be diminished by competition. “It shouldn’t matter if your kid has a bad race,” says McGrath, who has advocated for doing away with the ranking system in American youth racing, which would make it similar to the Norwegian system. American parents, he says, need to let go of the notion that, if their child isn’t performing well, then all is lost. “As long as they’re having fun and learning, that’s what matters. In the long run, that’s what makes kids love skiing.”