NomNomNorway (population: 5.7m) beats US (342m) to top Winter Olympics medal table
They have a fantastic, data driven training in all their sports. They rock Triathlon, no surprise that they also do well in the Olympics. Very earned, those people work hard for their success
Norway also target sports that have large numbers of available medals that they also have a historic affinity with ie cross country skiing (36 medals total, 14 won), biathlon (33 total, 11 won), ski jump (19 total, 5 won).
Norway is also incredibly wealthy and invests very heavily in its winter Olympic athletes where USA, obviously dramatically richer has to spread its resources across winter Olympics, summer Olympics and a whole host of sports that aren’t even in the Olympics.
We do well in a bunch of the summer olympic sports as well though. We are on the podium in Handball, track and field, Beach volleyball, rowing, etc. Not dominating like in the winter olympics. But very decent per capita there as well. So we aren’t targeting winter olympics at all. We just like sports.
Maybe I should rephrase, Norway’s sports development system works on a broad spectrum approach based on sports that have universal availability and appeal within the country. All the sports you mentioned, and cross-country skiing, biathlon, ski jump etc don’t require dedicated specialist facilities like ice hockey does for example.
That philosophy also happens to align very nicely with a natural affinity for, and infrastructure to develop top end talent in for those winter sports I mentioned.