Norway redeemed itself during the last few days of the Summer Olympics in Paris, ending a medal drought by winning several new ones including three more in gold. The country prides itself on supporting its top athletes, not least financially, but it’s often their families who help the most.
Decathlon winner Markus Rooth, for example, was quick to credit his family after winning the decathlon in Paris last week. Rooth instantly became Norway’s new hero after excelling in all the major track and field sports and becoming what has been called “The World’s Greatest Athlete.”
He didn’t hesitate to share the glory. “I have a pappa who’s always there, day and night, for training or planning it,” Rooth told newspaper Aftenposten. His mother and sisters also play a big role in his success, and they all received a huge welcome home in the modest Lambertseter district of Oslo where they live. They were also met by jubilant fans when they landed back in Norway and were all invited to the prime minister’s residence for a celebratory reception.
“Coming home to all this was crazy,” Rooth told newspaper VG. “I’m really proud, but I also struggle a bit to understand what’s happened.” After three days of “downtime” after his decathlon victory, he said he was looking most forward to getting back out on the field and exercising again.
Rooth is by no means alone in having family members behind him. Norwegian superstar runner Karsten Warholm, who ended up with “only” a silver medal in this year’s Olympics, trains with Leif Olav Alnes but Warholm’s mother runs his business affairs. The Ingebrigtsen family of runners has had highly public conflicts and brothers Jakob, Filip and Henrik effectively fired their father as their coach, but the brothers remain close. Jakob won another gold medal on Saturday in the men’s 5,000-meter race, with a time of just 13 minutes and 13.66 seconds.
Lots of other top Norwegian athletes have also had their fathers firmly behind them, from skiers Kjetil Andre Aamodt and Aksel Lund Svindal to football players Erline Braut Haaland and Martin Ødegaard and tennis star Casper Ruud, who also was part of this year’s troop to the Summer Olympics but didn’t progress to the finals.
Not everyone is as fortunate, though, or excels in mainstream sports that command the most attention. Two Norwegians defied the odds, when Grace Bullen won a bronze medal in women’s wrestling and Norway’s new heroine Solfrid Koanda won gold in women’s weightlifting over the weekend.
Bullen, now known as “Amazing Grace” in Norway, is the daughter of refugees who first fled war in Sudan and then again in Eritrea. Her parents and two sisters finally found shelter at a UN refugee camp and were later sent to Norway, where they settled in Fredrikstad. Grace was just four years old at the time and the family faced challenges fitting in to life in southern Norway.
“This whole journey hasn’t been easy at all,” her sister Araba told Aftenposten. She traveled with Grace, now age 27, and their father, Jacob Bullen, to Paris and they both said they’d all been looking forward to her first Olympics. The senior Bullen had been instrumental in launching Grace’s wrestling career after he met a Romanian wrestling coach when they both were taking Norwegian language classes. Bullen enrolled all three daughters in fellow immigrant Gjeorghe Costin’s wrestling lessons, but only Grace stuck with them. “I felt safe there, for the first time ever,” Grace has said. “That’s why I love wrestling.”
Bullen didn’t qualify for either of the last two Olympics and didn’t feel she was getting enough support from the Norwegian wrestling federation, or that women received as much support as men. She ended up moving to Georgia, where she trained with the Eastern European country’s men’s team until she came to terms with the Norwegian federation and has cooperated with it in the runup to the Olympics in Paris. “In our family, you don’t give up,” her father told Aftenposten, and now they’re heading home to Norway with a medal.
Norway’s other new Olympic heroine, Solfrid Koanda, has had a tough time, too, after arriving in Grimstad, Norway at the age of nine with a mother from Finland and a father from the Ivory Coast. She grew up in a troubled family, was put into foster care at the age of 15 and lost contact with her parents. She was, however, then able to combine school with exercise and began with crossfit training that led to weight lifting. She also worked as an electrician until 2022, when she was doing so well with weightlifting that she dared to devote all her energy to it.
Koanda quickly qualified for the Norwegian Championships, won there and then won both the European- and World Championships before winning Olympic gold on Saturday, just four years after first starting to lift weights. “It hasn’t been easy,” Koanda told NRK. “Norway is a small weight-lifting nation and we have a small team, but it feels fantastic to see that we have been creative and worked with everything we had.”
Koanda made it clear that the weight-lifting federation (NVF, Norges Vektløfter Forbund) lacks resources and could use more. It was so proud of her “historic” accomplishment that she was all over the front page of their website and fans were alerted that she was landing back in Norway at the airport in Kristiansand on Saturday afternoon. Her highly respected coach and NVF president Stian Griimseth was landing later on Monday in Oslo.
He’s who she thanked after her victory, along with the rest of NVF’s small team. “We’ve had some demanding years … but we have used the resources we have well,” Grimseth told NRK. “We have had a good team around her.” They were as thrilled as she was, especially when it became clear that Koanga wasn’t aware she’d won when she left the stage. When NVF’s team could tell her that she’d won the most points, she could hardly believe it and rushed back to the stage to receive all the cheers and applause, laughing and crying through it all at the same time.
Prime Minister Støre also sent his congratulations to her and NVF for what he called an “historic Olympic gold medal,” since Norway hasn’t won gold in weightlifting since 1972. Støre wrote in a message to NVF that “the joy of victory that Solfrid showed when it became clear she’d won gold has spread all the way home to Norway. We look forward to following her, also to the World Championships in Førde (central Norway) next year.”
Norway’s Olympic Committee also awarded Koanda the honour of carrying Norway’s flag at the closing ceremonies on Sunday. She later told reporters that she now also plans to travel to Finland to visit her mother.
Norway’s women’s handball team also won gold at the Olympics on Saturday, bringing Norway’s final medal count to eight: four gold, one silver and three bronze. The two other bronze medals were won by the men’s sandvolleyball duo and in sailing. Tore Øvrebrø, chief of Norway’s national athletics association, was pleased, just a week after conceding that the medal count at that point was disappointing.
“We had a fantastic day (on Saturday), which allowed us to meet our goal (of eight medals), but it was hanging by a hair,” Øvrebø said at a closing press conference in Paris Sunday morning. He thanked the International Olympic Committee, France and the residents of Paris for a “fantastic” Olympics with “impressive” audiences at all events.
“This Olympics has been full of proud Norwegian athletic moments,” he said. “It’s so magical, and there are so many athletes who have done their best.” It was the largest troop from Norway ever at a Summer Olympics. He could also point out that equal amounts of male and female athletes were represented, and the medal count was evenly split as well.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
