One curious thing I observed about the winter Olympics is the domination of tiny Norway in medal rankings. They were at the top of the table in 2018 games and are currently at the top as well. It's insane how a country of 5 million is able to do it, ahead of russia, china, usa, canada etc. It's not like these countries don't get snow or don't have enough money. I wonder what's the real reason. Lack of interest? Lack of winter sports culture?
I have no idea, but at a guess, I suppose the number of people in the country _with easy access to the sports_ is the more important number than the raw population. There's 300 million people in the US but how many of them have access to snowsports?
It might also just be a reflection of the distribution of medals available - Norway has dominated in the cross country skiing based events, but Germany dominates in the sliding events. Between biathlon,cross country skiing and nordic combined there are 26 disciplines, but luge + skeleton + bobsleigh have only 10 between them.
An odd way to put it, since there will be 50-odd gold medalists and 50 physical gold medals handed out to ice hockey players. If Canada picks up some of those it will be a more accurate representation of the level of participation in winter sports in that country.
The "two medals" is a quirk of one particular way of displaying medal tables.
"Winter sports culture" needs to be broken down. I think a number of factors are influencial
- Number of medals per discipline
- Competition from other countries in each discipline
- Cultural factors. For example, cross country skiing is not only a sport, it is also a leasure activity in Norway, similar to hiking.
- An accessible sport have an easier time to get many participants. Most of Norway gets snow in winter and access to nature is not particularily restricted. I don't know for a fact but I imagine in the US you are not equally allowed to ski on someone else's property?
- Financial means. Goes without saying but Norway can afford supporting youth and elite skiers on many levels.
Norway is also the country where several of these sports originated. Slalom is a norwegian word. Cross-country skiing developed to a large extent in Norway, etc :)
There's never one simple explanation, but I'll offer this one: High relative status of winter sports. If you're a top endurance talent in Norway, odds are you'll go into cross-country instead of running.
7/9 of their gold medals are in cross-country skiing or biathlon. It would appear these disciplines give a lot more medals than others, and if you have a strong tradition in the discipline you'll get more medals than a country that has a strong ice-hockey tradition.
Also, the countries you mention are big, but how many people actually live close enough to a ski resort (or similar) to actually matter? Is it significantly different from say Austria or Switzerland, which are small, but where a much bigger proportion of the population can actually train for winter sports?
