Making history

Many a times, we cannot help but wonder how people from some countries end up stacking a much higher Olympics tally despite being so small in size.

For example take this place in Norway – Trøndelag. More than 20% of Norway’s Olympics medals come from this region though the population from this region accounts for just 8% of total population of Norway. In the South Korea Winter Olympics held in Feb this year, Norway led the medal tally, with a record 38 medals of which 18 were gold. And statistics show that out of every nine medals won by Norway, eight come from Trøndelag. Entire Norway has a population of around five million people and the country holds the crown of winning the maximum Winter Olympics medals at 305, the highest by a country. Many say that given the almost 9 long months of winter, year round snow, people there are used to the cold, skiing  and walking long miles through snow, so many justify this medal tally on their physiological make-up, which has got used to the cold and the snow of the region. But then if that was true, we should see the same results from Sweden, which does have a decent score but not as much as Norway.

So what’s the secret of Norway? Many say that it is the spirit of the people – they strongly live by the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. Thus before age 6, Norwegian kids can only train but not formally compete in sports, and before age 11, all children participating in a competition must be awarded the same prize. Sports comes ahead of education and children are encouraged to play outdoors even on the coldest days. Also they are introduced to various types of skiing which most of the world does not even know about thus competing in games and winning becomes easier. In a lot of way, it is the culture and life style of most Norwegians which makes them into winners, just like Kenya produces some of the world’s best athletes. Wonder what culture our poor performing cricket team of India follows? Only money?