The Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City has shown that also small countries like Norway and Sweden can compete with the bigger ones. But how come Norway with a population of 4,4 million can be better in winter sports than bigger countries such as Italy and Great Britain? Many people believe that the bigger the country is, the more it’s going to win. That’s only partly correct, but we know there are other reasons to success. We compared some totally different countries to see how it all connects.

The climate has a big part of the success for each country. Italy has the Alps in the North which makes it possible to perform several winter sports, especially the alpine sports. The ice hockey is there but it isn’t so developed yet. With Italy’s climate conditions they are competitors to rely on in both winter- and summer Olympics.

In Great Britain it rains a lot. The average temperature is +10 degrees. The temperature never falls under +2 degrees even during the coldest months. That makes it difficult for the snow to stay on the ground even if it would snow. This is a of course bad if you try to practice winter sports there. But on the other hand it makes the summer sports conditions very good.

Norway is pretty like Sweden in the climate. Norway is a rocky country. On many locations there are many glaciers, which are left from the Ice age. And there’s very much snow in the mountains, especially in the North. This also makes the possibilities for winter sports in the country excellent. But the fact that Norway has shown their good knowledge in winter sports is not just depending on the climate. The Norwegians have for many years concentrated their efforts on the alpine sports and the cross country skiing is a national pastime. That makes more athletes in Norway to be more active in these kind of sports.

© 2002 Freeway
Writers: Sven Björkland (sp03-28@park.se) and Henrik Vestin (sp03-23@park.se).
HTML by: ONy (olle@park.se).