What Can Surfing Learn From Norway’s Olympic Domination?

And that’s a wrap on the Cortina Winter Olympics. The curlers have put down their stones, the hockey players their sticks, and the figure skaters their sequins. And the winners? By a ski jump and a half, it was Norway. With a population of less than six million, they won more gold medals (18) and more medals (41) than the second-place USA (population 342m), which claimed 12 golds in a total of 33 medals.

The Scandinavian country trounced traditional winter-sports nations with far larger populations, such as China (1.4bn), Germany (84m), Italy (59m) and Canada (40m).

The question is how?  And a supplementary question: what’s it got to do with surfing? “The answer isn't genetics, altitude, or cold weather. It's philosophy. And it starts not with elite athletes, but with eight-year-olds,” said Justin Fleming, an elite athlete performance coach.

Now, at this stage, you might be thinking that success has come through talent identification, elite funding pathways and access to high-performance coaching from as early as possible. In surfing, we’ve probably all seen the mini-groms doing heat drills, getting videotaped by parents and coaches, all dreaming of a far-off-in-the-distance CT career.

“Norway made a different choice,” continued Fleming. “Before age 13, scorekeeping isn't just discouraged — it's prohibited. Trophies, when they're given at all, go to every participant. The national philosophy for youth sport has a name: Idrettsglede — the joy of sport.”

Idrettsglede is the cornerstone of Norway’s youth sports ecosystem, called the Children’s Rights in Sport. First introduced in 1987, it established fundamental rights and specific provisions that regulate competition for all children in Norway.

In addition to the no trophies and scoring, there are no national competitions, meaning kids play only local leagues, no online publishing of results and/or athlete rankings and children are free to switch teams or clubs mid-season with no penalty.

In the USA, it’s a very different picture. The youth sports industry is a multibillion-dollar industry, as private equity firms have bought up leagues and tournaments, creating a hyper-competitive pay-to-play model, intent on creating a pipeline directly from youth sports to professional sports. The machinery of elite sport now reaches into elementary school. A child who doesn't commit to a single sport by middle school is already, in some circles, considered behind.

“For the money, kids get pro-level coaching, careful dietary monitoring from nutritionists, and mental performance labs that look like they were built to train astronauts, not volleyball players,” wrote Vice, in a recent investigation. “It’s all a part of the new American dream. You can’t just play the game to have fun with friends.”

Looking at surfing as an example, the 2025 NSSA National Championships saw surfers from all over the country travel to Huntington. The youngest division was the Under 10s for boys and girls. Now boys winner, Hawaiian Jojo Cinco, is an incredible talent who clearly loves surfing and is backed by supportive parents and the North Shore community.

And the NSSA model has been integral to every USA champion from Kelly Slater, Carissa Moore and John Florence. If Cinco were Norwegian, though, he’d only be competing with friends at home and purely for fun until he was 13. From that stage, he could decide with his parents if he wanted to go down a more specialised, high-performance pathway. He may be the exception, but how many talented surfers either get burned out by competition or have parents who can’t afford the investment and, once lost to the system, can’t get back in?.

“We can either instil a love of sport in our youth, or we can turn sport into a burden where kids are exhausted, stressed, and scared,” wrote Steve Magness, an innovative coach to some of the top distance runners in the world. “We’ve seen this go both ways, and the results couldn’t be more different. One leads to happy, healthy, and better young athletes. The other leads to burnout, family tension, mental health challenges, and quitting.”

The stats back it up. Studies show that 93% percent of Norwegian children participate in youth sports. In the United States, that number is closer to half — and falling. By age 13, 70% of American kids have quit organized sport entirely.

“The most common reason they give isn't injury, cost, or time. It's that it stopped being fun. We are, quite literally, coaching children out of the game,” wrote Fleming.

Now, the Norway model isn’t exactly easy to replicate. In 2025, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (generated by profits from its nationalised oil exports) was valued at over $2 trillion, translating to roughly $340,000 per citizen. This money is invested in various assets, and the annual returns are used to support Norway’s social model — healthcare, education, pensions, and a large investment in youth sports. Having this amount of cash, spread about a small population, is an advantage.

However, if other countries, and individual sports like surfing, can’t replicate the Norway model, they should at least learn from it. The Winter Olympics Medal Table is just the latest data set that shows the science is clear.

If we can delay specialization, encourage multi-sport participation, lower costs, and keep the emphasis off results at young ages, it will produce healthier kids and, over time, better athletes. This applies to all sports, including surfing.

Let the kids be kids. And let 'em go surfing for fun. Doesn’t seem that difficult.