As we celebrate a solid performance at the winter Olympics with 21 medals, and lament the loss in the final for both women and men’s hockey, I take some solace from one of the surest bets in sports.
When it comes to the winter Olympics, the mightiest nation on earth isn’t the United States, or China, or even the host nation (Italy in this case), it’s the tiny but highly skilled country of Norway.
I made the joke before things started that the slogan for the winter games itself should be
“The Winter Olympics, Norway’s time to shine”.
You see, Norway doesn’t win, it dominates from end to end (no curling pun intended).
Norway finished first in medals with 41 and first in gold with 18. The U.S. was second in the overall medal count with 33 including a dozen gold.
It’s even more impressive when you realize that they also won the gold medal and overall medal count in 2022, an Olympics that included Russian athletes.
Now, add to that the fact that Norway is a nation of only 5.6 million people. That’s less than a seventh of our population of just over 40 million, and a tiny fraction of the 348 million people who make up the talent pool of the athletes competing for the United States of America.
The taunting from U.S. hockey fans yesterday was unrelenting, but when I was a bit down about it I took a second to think of how the mightiest nation on earth was beaten in every conceivable way on the world stage by a much-smaller nation that their citizens probably couldn’t find on a map.
At the Winter Olympics, it’s Norway or no way at all.
I’m Paul Martin and that’s what I see looking Beyond the headlines.
