Norwegian dominance of winter sports

The key factor in this success? Lillehammer 1994.

Competing at home prompted heroic performances on snow and ice from the Norwegians. They finished second in the overall Lillehammer 1994 medals table behind Russia, with 26 medals, including 10 golds.

This inspired a new generation of athletes – and the institutions built in the region were central to this development.

Made up of a number of sports colleges nationwide, the Norwegian College of Elite Sport (NTG), which combines elite sports training with regular schooling, has become known as the “gold medal factory”.

The Lillehammer branch of the NGT was stablished in 1994 as part of the post-Games planning for the Olympic facilities. NTG Lillehammer gives its students the opportunity to train every day in world-class Olympic venues, which are perfect for elite sport students.

Students from the Lillehammer branch of the college tend to be particularly successful: based on the rankings from the last four Olympic Winter Games, NTG Lillehammer’s students alone rank 12th in the list of overall medal winners, ahead of China and Italy.

Combining schooling and sports training in an adequate way is extremely important at the NTG. NTG Lillehammer therefore offers training in 10 different sports, and study specialisations in languages, social sciences, economics and science.

Olympiatoppen (the Norwegian Centre for Elite Sports), an organisation which is part of the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports, started first as a project to prepare the Norwegian athletes for the Lillehammer 1994 Games. After their great success at the Games, it was established as a permanent organisation. The Innland region department, based in Lillehammer, was established in 2010. Today, the organisation is split between seven regions.

Many Norwegian YOG competitors were inspired by Norway’s success at the 1994 Games. Lillehammer’s homegrown biathlon champion, Sivert Bakken, for example, explained that the “Olympic afterglow” present in his region helped him grow into an Olympian; his hero, Olympic multi-medallist Ole Einar Bjørndalen, and his coach, Anne Elvebakk, both competed in the 1994 Games.

Norway’s YOG Alpine skiers Nina Haver-Loeseth and Ragnhild Mowinckel were inspired to take up their sport by the 1994 Games; they would both later compete at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games, with Mowinckel winning double silver and Haver-Loeseth a team bronze.

The 2016 YOG themselves have subsequently inspired new athletes. The two male winners of the mixed curling event at the Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games, Lukas Hoestmaelingen and Grunde Buraas, took up the sport after watching the action in their hometown in 2016.

Lillehammer 1994 was also used as a vehicle for getting Norwegians generally into better physical condition. Coordinated with the torch relay, the “People in Shape for the Olympics” day attracted 250,000 participants, taking part in a variety of different events. The Olympic Run, 5k and 10k runs through the streets of Lillehammer, was organised annually from 1987 until 2002, attracting up to 11,500 young (from 12 years old) and adult participants in 1993.