The Most Decorated Winter Olympian Ever: Johannes Klæbo On Training, Mindset & Reinventing His Sport

0:00There goes Klæbo. The amount of energy expenditure that is required for you to do that has to be insane. I saw the video myself and I was like, that looks pretty good. Johannes Klæbo. 13 time Olympic medalist, 11 gold medals, the most gold medals won at a single Winter Olympics, most career gold medals won by any Winter Olympic athlete. Like, it's insane what you've accomplished. I always had this mindset where I hate to lose. The feeling of winning a race is amazing. The feeling of becoming second is so much worse. It is a mental game. You are saying that, okay, we just go over the next hill, the next hill, and then you just continue to trick your head to just move a little bit more.

0:51So a thousand hours of training, what does it look like? Two and a half hours of... Oh, really? Oh, interesting. You're very much known as somebody who's modernized your sport and brought it into 2026, which in the United States is, you know, it's a relatively obscure sport. I would say that most people had almost, at least in the United States, like had very little connection with this sport until they saw you essentially, you know, running uphill in your skis at 10.3 miles an hour at sub six minute pace and just minds were blown when that viral moment occurred and that has probably done more for the um uh just awareness of the sport than anybody has done in the last 30 or 40 years that's probably true and i think i think it's good that people can actually see when you actually put in numbers on it you know when you see like there is because we are having kilometers per hour but then you see like okay it's 18.2 kilometers per hour in the uphills you see the incline just for people to understand and get to get to know it a little bit more because then it's easier for people to to really understand how how fast we are running those hills um but yeah i it was a cool moment to see that so many people were paying attention to what we are doing I mean cross-country skiing has always been a really small sport but it's it's getting bigger and I think that what has been my goal is to to tell people and try to show people how healthy of a sport cross-country skiing is because you're using your legs you're using your upper body and then you're also working your endurance and those three things you're working out at the same time when you're out there and it also is really a really low risk of getting injured like in terms of when you're running or biking or whatever it's like there is not that many sports that are doing upper body lower body and endurance at the same time and uh swimming swimming would probably be the closest comp that's probably the closest one and i think those two sports or in general a sport like that is it's really efficient for people to stay in good shape and staying healthy and what we see over the last years is that uh people are more paying more attention to their health trying to uh do the right workouts uh eat the right things and and stuff like that which i which i think is really cool because i think we are in a it's a more healthier way we are doing things these days than we did before?

3:42Mm-hmm. There's this sense within the endurance community. If you're an endurance athlete, it's one thing to be a runner or triathlete, one of these kind of sports. But the sport that commands the most amount of respect among the people who are steeped in endurance is cross-country skiing. That's where the fittest people in the world are. It's a different breed. Like the degree of endurance and strength and agility that is demanded in order to be at an elite level in this sport is incomparable to any other endurance pursuit. Like it is like the, you know, kind of apex predator of fitness. And I want to I want you to like kind of explain like the rigor of this sport that you dominate.

4:35like what goes into being able to compete at the highest level in cross-country skiing oh i think there is uh there's a lot of factors that are are important but uh um one thing is you definitely need to have like the vo2 max like the vo2 is is important because you are uh we're doing so many up and downs in terms of like a race it's say it's a 10k race it's basically 22 minutes of full speed from start to finish it's a lot of uphills a lot of downhills but it's at the end the vo2 max needs to be so high that you're able to uh if you're going to perform at the highest level and then another aspect of it is is the technical part um and I think that is uh important in a lot of sports uh and I think it is as important in cross-country skiing as it is in so many other sports because it's just uh it's important to have the right technique in the right type of terrain the right type of hills you know because if the hill is five percent incline you need to use this kind of technique but when it's six it's a little bit different and that changes from seconds to seconds so it's it's really a hard balance to find the right technical part every single part of the of the track and then I also think that just being well just having the endurance to to be able to race over in in the cold air but also like like we do it's a race weekend for me can be everything from 1.3 kilometers which is uh yeah i don't know how long it is in miles but it's probably just less than a mile or just under yeah just under a mile and then we have like the 50k which is like two hours of racing and the other the sprint is just below three minutes yeah and then you have like everything in between there meaning you need to have those fast muscle fibers to be able to to perform in the sprint but you also need the endurance to be able to perform on a 50k and i think that's kind of the beauty of the sport which for me has always been been the trigger to be able to do everything yeah so for people that are unfamiliar with johannes let's just catch people up here uh 13 time olympic medalist 11 gold medals uh you hold the record for the most gold medals won at a single winter olympics most career gold medals won by enter any winter olympic athlete like it's insane what you've accomplished.

7:29And I think just as equally impressive is the fact that you're winning at the sprint distances all the way up to 50K. So the equivalent would be somebody who's winning the gold medal in the 400 meters on the track and then also winning the marathon. It's inconceivable. So how are you able to have such agility and dexterity to be able to be dominant in both the sprint distances and the longest races available all the way up to the 50k I mean it's just mind-blowing I mean I think I think it has been it's been a goal of mine since I was it was really young and my granddad is my my coach and he's 82 years old now uh and he has always been my coach since I was yeah he was the one picking me up from school bringing me to training to practice uh we were in the weekends we went out for for skiing sessions uh every single weekend uh during the winter so so he has been a huge part of of my success but um i would say that i think one of the key factors is that we we started with the goal of winning a sprint race that was where we started because we saw that when i was 18 19 years old we figured out that okay it's quicker for me to become good in sprint than it is to become good in distance skiing so we decided to put some extra focus on the sprint part when I was 17 18 19 years old and when I then became a senior and was able to to raise the world cup we were able to perform in sprint from from day one and when we were able to train a thousand hours which is kind of the limit for us it's then we decided that we're gonna start shifting the focus from sprint to distance and that was about when I was 20 so we slowly changed the focus a little bit more from sprint specific training to more distance training so we added altitude training we added a lot more longer sessions like a normal sprint week for me would be like previous was probably say between 18 and 21 hours now we are doing more like if we're doing 21 hours it's a low week yeah now we are more closer to between 25 and 30 more or less averaging that the whole year so So we have kind of, and we have shifted the focus in terms of just having more longer sessions, three hour sessions, more or less every day, just to build that endurance over time.

10:18And I think that's, has showed that it is actually possible to, to keep the sprints part, but we also have developed the, the distant part. So we're now able to, to do both more or less. It's smart. It's patient. and it's the right way to do it because you can, if you're fast and you have your technique down with speed, you can always build endurance over time and you have plenty of years to do that. And by taking your time and incrementally like moving up and extending those distances while maintaining your speed, like that's a really smart way to do it. You can't do it the other way around. You can't specialize in the long distance and then expect to develop speed later.

11:05No, because I think what we have seen over the years is that you're getting slower by the age, you know? And that was important for me to use that momentum I had when I was 18, 19 years old, build the right technique, build the right strength to be able to be quick and fast and then shift it a little bit more endurance, but then maintain the sprint parts more than doing it the opposite way because then it is hard to work against that you're actually becoming older. And I think for me that's... So now I feel like these days I need to have a little bit more focus on the sprint parts. Just a few sessions here and there where I actually need to maintain it a little bit better because you can feel like you're getting a little bit slower by just getting older and older and older.

12:00So we're still not in that time where we are too old to do sprints, but it's a shift kind of coming around 32, 33 years old where you see that that is actually really difficult. I'm sure there are other athletes in your sport that have approached it in this same way. So this still doesn't explain why you're so much better. Like it's a rational approach, like a really good, like long-term approach to excellence in your sport. But I'm sure there are other people that are doing the same thing. That's probably true. So I'm going to get you. I want you to articulate, I want you to say out loud, the quiet part out loud.

12:46Why are you so much better? What is the differentiator? I mean it's it's hard to it is really hard to say because I feel like there's so many athletes that are doing the right things but I feel like I've always had this I always had this mindset where I I hate to lose that much I mean I feel like it's almost the feeling of winning a race is amazing, but it's just the feeling of becoming second. It's so much worse. Is it because you feel like you're letting yourself down? Is it an internal motivation or is it because you lost to somebody else? No, it is. I always like to say that I'm racing against myself.

13:32It's always been about me and what I can do against my own kind of head. Because I feel like when I'm racing a 50k it's it is a mental game you know it is it is about yourself and how you are try or how you're able to to trick your head in the way that you're saying that okay we just go over the next hill the next hill and then you just continue to trick your head to just move a little bit more and at the end you're crossing the finish line and then you kind of if you did everything right you're crossing it first but if you if you are not able to to trick your head enough that's like what i say to myself i feel like that's where i where i let myself down so for me it's always been about myself and how how i can play play this game against myself and that's kind of the for me that's always what has has been has been you you hate to lose more than anybody else this is your answer and it is like that it always been like that i mean it was like that when i was playing soccer as well as a young kid you know um it was that when i it's almost like that when we are in the cabin with my family just playing cards you know i just have that when it is a competition when there is something on the line i feel like i just it's love to life or death it seems like that But what's interesting about that is it's not the story most people might imagine.

15:13Yes, your grandfather has always been there. Yes, your mother was also a skier. Your grandfather gave you your first pair of skis when you were like two years old. But it wasn't like, now I'm on the skis and it's just this clean path to excellence without obstacles. I mean, you were pretty average in your younger years. Like I read up on, you know, the experience of you being in sports at around age 14 and you were much smaller than everybody. There was no, there was a, there was a sense that you had some athletic gifts, but you were pretty average in every regard. Yeah. I mean, I started out quite well when I was really young.

15:52and then in Norway we don't have like the we don't take the time on the kids when they are racing until they are at least 10 I think so but because you are starting going to practices when you are like five six years old that was when I started as well and then from five six until 10 you we don't take we take the time but you don't you put it in a random random numbers you don't kind of have the one standing on the first of the result list is not the one who was winning the race that was kind of randomized every single weekend when you when you were racing and I think uh at that time I was always I was always looking at the time like how how did I do compared to my friends and everyone else but uh when when we became 14 I was like people started growing up a little bit more I was still really really small and then it was like yeah double polling against a man it was a kid against a man you know it was huge differences so I was in just my local area where we were probably like 40 people racing and I was probably just around 20 just in the middle how did that work with your hatred of losing no it was it was terrible my mom always told me every single week like okay we need to find something else to do like this is not gonna can't continue but then we um i think i together with my grand that we find a way to or we found a way to to work or we're looking into what we could do what can i do to become better uh because at some point I will start growing up a little bit more so we decided okay we're going to focus on the things we we can do something about which is my technique I can't do anything about that I'm small so we just need to wait and that was when we started really focusing on the technique like how are we double pulling the running like all the things we are doing these days and the balance on the skis has been the key factor to my success, I would say.

18:13And that was something we developed from I was 14 until I was 17 when I finally started growing a little bit more. At 15, you announced that you were going to be the best or you had set this goal for yourself, even though at age 14, there was no indication that that was a possibility. But there's some interesting things that occurred around that time. First of all, it's set against this, uh, cultural backdrop, um, that much has been written about and talked about recently. Like what's going on with Norway? Like Norway is just having this moment. Like, look at the exceptionalism that we're seeing at the Olympic level.

18:51We saw it in the world cup over the past couple of weeks. We've got you, we've got Ingebrigtsen, we've got, you know, Gustav and Christian in triathlon. Like we're just seeing just such an outsized, um, series of, of exceptional uh athletes like yourself that is hard for the american brain to make sense of like how is this happening and then when you understand like oh they don't keep score until they're 13 they have this whole different culture around winning and losing and and now like that's become almost a test case for parents and new sports like how to do this correctly which i think is super interesting and within that you had a coach who came up with a whole set of challenges for people like yourself the runes challenge can you talk a little bit about that because i think it's super interesting yeah that is interesting yeah so so my coach at that time was his goal was to have as many of the kids participate in as many of the practices as possible that was kind of his overall goal and what he then started was like a challenge where you got points every time you was at a practice so then you got like one point and then on every single practice we had like some sort of relays it was it could be we were picked in four five different teams and then we had a relay but it was not to do uh back and forth the fastest like regular skiing it was with one ski okay okay we took off one ski it was with one pole it was without poles it was like so many different ways of doing that kind of relay and then you got points based on how how you perform on that relay and at the end of the season when when we were done we kind of had like a pursuit where we were starting based on how many points you had collected over the last year and then you can see like okay people that have that have been at many practices they had an advantage on the pursuit so for me that was like it was a goal to to do well on the runes challenge at the end of the season because like that was a gave you a picture of that you have been taking part a lot of times but you have also been been showing up you know and uh i feel like um it for me and when i look back at it it's it was a perfect way of keeping as many of the kids to to join the practices as possible and i think that's kind of the culture in norway and like you said the discussions these days has been in what are we doing in norway because we have so i mean we are a small country in terms we have 5.5 million people it's pretty small in like in the big world but we're still having so many top athletes in so many different sports and I think what we are doing is that the overall goal for so many of the local clubs is that we want to have and we want the kids to try out as many sports as possible and we want to keep them there for as long as possible and then when we are becoming 15 16 17 years old and we are going to make the decision if we're going to do high school towards sports or we're going to do it towards other things that's kind of when people start making their decisions yeah but until they are 15 we try to keep as many as long as possible and I feel like that has been a key success and a key factor of the culture in Norway and I think that has worked out uh really well but I also think that when you speak to so many of the top athletes everyone has been uh like they haven't they really appreciate it these days like looking back how how cool the practices actually actually was because we were so many kids every single time yeah and creating a culture where it's all about making sure that the kids are are plugged in they're connected to the sport and that they're falling in love with it so that they can have a lifelong relationship with some kind of movement rather than a negative memory of like never getting picked and you know forget that i'm moving in another direction like sports is not for me yeah and i think uh just having the opportunity to try different sports you know a lot of norwegians are doing cross-country skiing at least from when they are six until they are ten yeah there's like a thousand ski clubs in norway right uh it's so many yeah just around my place where i stay it's uh from my place to granos and where we had the world championship is five kilometers it's three clubs just from on those five kilometers so it's it's a lot but like I said I think it's a lot of people are trying cross-country skiing for just four years but then they have developed the capability to actually when they're getting older they will remember how they are how it is to ski so they can when they are getting older they can use skiing as a training form you know they can go in the cabins during the winter and then they go skiing in the weekends as a part of their uh staying in shape uh program and they're trying soccer they're trying track and field they're trying cycling there is like the goal is for the kids to try out as many sports as possible because then you're the parents are then like trying to let the kids decide is there soccer or is it cross-country skiing or is it track and field you think is the most fun you know and based on fun that's where you make the decision more than just being put on like a sport and you get kind of forced a little bit more to just do it for some years rather than just trying out different things and then you can decide for yourself yeah it is the counterintuitive path to excellence though over time because there is this idea that if you want to be the best you're going to have to specialize early.

25:38And the example that Norway is setting is that that's an incorrect way of thinking about it. Have you read David Epstein's book, Range? No. So it's all about this. I'm going to send you this book. Basically, we have this idea that the best people in the world specialized early and they were just focused and they put in their 10 ,000 hours. And that's the only way you're going to get to the top. And there are examples of that. You have the Tiger woods and those sorts of individuals. But by and large, when you canvas the best in the world in all kinds of disciplines from science and academia to athletics, you will see that the people that not only are the best but have sustained long careers of excellence are people that did lots of things when they were young and then arrived into their specialty a little bit later with all of this experience that has contributed to not only peak performance but sustaining that peak performance yeah i think that if you have tried out many different things and you found that that soccer is what i love the most imagine how many hours and how much energy you're able to then put into soccer because you know that that's the sport you love the most or if it's cross-country skiing it doesn't matter but like I think just have been able to try out different things and as a kid figure out that okay this sport is where I like to put my focus and this is where I like to to spend my time then you're able to spend thousands of hours practicing that those other experiences aren't distractions they're actually contributing to your success in your specialty like you were a soccer player, I know there was a moment where you had to make a decision whether you were going to go into soccer or skiing, but your experience as a soccer player on the pitch contributed to your success as a skier because it gave you a different kind of fitness and a practice of agility in a different context that has improved your technique as a skier.

27:45Absolutely. And I think that's, it is an interesting topic because I feel like everyone thinks and a lot of people thinks that you need to to do it this way or the other but i think there is i think we norway we have at least tried to found like a middle way here where we keep as many of the kids to participate for as long as is possible and then we hopefully then and then that's at least what we have seen over the years now that that has developed a lot of top athletes in so many different sports. I love the outdoors, but I'll admit, ever since I started driving my Rivian, I find myself making even more time to just hop in and take it to places where I can live real experiences.

28:35I was recently able to drive an R2 with RJ Skaring, the founder and CEO of Rivian, and we talked about how this is no accident. How does that idea of like how are we creating this completely seamless connection with the outdoors through a car that by definition sort of has to seal you off from the outdoors? And how do the design decisions inform that perspective? If you're in this car, you should feel like if you want to go somewhere and explore a hike or stay a little later, it's there. it's just again a little nudge to say it's okay to explore yeah seek out the unknown the front trunk has a drain plug in it and the rear of the glass dropping in this car is a really nice feature because it allows you to throw a surfboard in the back or you can easily put your gear in the back so it's just all these little things that are you know that yes they're features and they're on their own they're maybe not the whole story but you put them all together as a meal that should feel like a product that's just built for someone that wants to go live a full, adventurous life.

29:43To watch the rest of our conversation and learn all about the R2 and the places it can take you, go to stories.rivian.com slash richroll. This episode is brought to you by Whoop, the wearable health and fitness coach that turns insights about your sleep, your recovery, your strain, and your overall health into better daily decisions. Here is a phrase I keep coming back to. We measure longevity in years, but we measure life in moments. And the older that I get, I turn 60 this fall, the more I care about the second part. It's not just about adding time. It's about the quality of life in every moment of time that I have left.

30:22And that's how I view my whoop. I've got real goals ahead, getting back to pain-free running, and hopefully, fingers crossed, being fit and injury-proof enough to participate in the New York City Marathon this fall to celebrate my 60th birthday. but the only way I'm gonna get there is by understanding my body the best I can and by meeting its needs without exceeding them. WHOOP prevents me from making those bad decisions. By being able to see how my sleep is trending, how I'm absorbing the strain of my training to recover efficiently, I now know when to push and when to back off, which has allowed me to show up with more energy, more presence for the stuff that matters most.

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31:19I want to talk about soccer a little bit. So you've been supporting Norway. You've been going to the games. You're going to go to the final here this weekend. How many of the Norway games did you go? Did you go to all of them? No, I didn't have time to do that. So I came for the most important match, which was against Senegal in the group stage. So I was just here for three or four days. One of my good friends is playing, so I wanted to come out and cheer for them. and it was a cool experience and just seeing how much soccer... I mean, we haven't qualified for the World Cup in 28 years. So in Norway now, it's just been complete World Cup fever in Norway.

32:06Like we say in Norway, it's just been crazy. Everyone is drinking beer. They are staying up late because of the time difference and just been completely... Out of their skulls. Yeah, I would say so. It's been all about the World Cup. But here's the thing. You're the absolute goat in your sport. I can't imagine you would trade it for anything, but is there a small part of you that is at these games, watching Norway play, thinking, that could have been me, man. I could have been out there. Absolutely. Absolutely. yeah so like look at what's going on with erling and how the world has just fallen in love with this guy and he's just become the most famous and celebrated athlete in the world i know and you're like damn man with with good reason though i mean he's he's a great guy and he has it's so you is he are you mates with him i've been meeting him a couple of times in terms of like some we have some mutual sponsors together but uh yeah he is a great guy i mean it's just amazing to see what he has accomplished over the last i mean over his so far in his career but also especially this this world cup i mean it was so much fun yeah so and talk about somebody who understands social media it's insane yeah so here's what you need to do you need to you need to make a youtube video with him where you make him do a day in your life and then you live a day in his life like in training and nutrition etc i think i think like the world would go insane i agree i think that could be that could be something yeah really cool because i like like i said a few of my a lot of my friends are soccer players and um it's just uh i know i mean in the in the summers we all normally go to a week of holidays together during the summer and when we then compare the trainings like soccer player against like me as in cross-country skiers like a couple of years ago was in Lufoten up north in Norway and I was going out for a three hours double polling session in the morning and I came back and then they have been or he has been out running he had been running like five kilometers and then he had done 10 times 100 200 meters up a hill that was a session and it has been an amazing session you know and that was probably for say an hour max and then i was out for three hours came back and knew that i was going out for another two hours in the evening while he was just having an hour and it was super satisfied and that was a really good training day for him so it's really like when you compare those in terms of hours it's uh it's completely different of course but uh they have a way different uh like muscle um stress on their muscles compared to what i have when i do three hour sessions but um yeah sometimes when i'm doing like three hours in the mud up in tronheim like it's raining and it's just terrible weather sometimes i wish i was like a soccer player could do like an hour hour and a half and i was like yeah that was good but uh yeah also also in terms of like how much you're getting paid by the hour is a big difference one thing i didn't know about you is that in i think it was 2020 you signed a five-year uh professional cycling contract like you joined a professional cycling team are you still it's not surprising that you would uh use the bike to train for ski but uh this is how good you are as an overall like diverse athlete yeah so so the reason for for me to do that was that uh me and my granddad was was looking into how can we develop the endurance now what can we do to become a little bit better and then we went back to see what what i have done the previous years uh and then i had one year where I had broke my collarbone so I needed to bike for like 4 weeks until I was able to use my upper body again and that season I was doing it very good on the skating races so we went back and looked into okay what can we do this year to develop the endurance and then I knew the guy that was in charge of the cycling team and I started texting them and we we figure out that if I'm going to do more cycling in my training I want to learn cycling from the best and that's why I contacted them and we decided that this is something we can work together on and so I went from psych I used the bike 30 hours over a year and change that to using it a hundred hours a year um but I just wanted to I wanted to learn as much as possible from the cycling team in terms of how I can use the bike and just fitting and everything so I do things properly because I think that's always been one of my key factors that when I first start doing something and first going to do something I really want to do well you know and I want to go into the details and see what can I do to to do better and that was actually why why we started working with UNOX which is now a world tour team they two days ago had a stage win in Tour de France and they've just been crushing it the last last couple of years so it's it's cool to to have taken part of that and actually learned from the best.

38:08Are you still on the team? Yeah, I'm still on the team, but they have the season when I don't have the season. So it's hard to combine those things. But the last years, I've always been in the Tour de France just watching, taking part for some days. This year, I didn't have time, but it's... Did you race also? I haven't been racing. So that's kind of... Just training, yeah. I wish I did, but I think I started actually got a text from tour who sold which is kind of the oh yeah sports uh director of the team and absolute legend and director now yeah and he wanted me to like see if we could quit skiing and and start cycling but i think unfortunately i think it's too late in terms of like i think building the endurance in the uphill would be possible not against today for sure but like in um in a quite good um good way i think it will be possible to have good enough endurance because i think we the vo2 and everything is is very good but i think the biggest challenge will be just staying in the pack like imagine how much because i don't have been racing you know and also the downhills yeah yeah i mean a lot of that you can learn there's some aspect of it because you haven't been doing it since birth that would probably be difficult but you can learn to ride in a path you could all a lot of that is trainable like it would be cool to see you jump into maybe a shorter stage race and and see what you can do and and uh that could be another career yeah i i don't know if it's too late turning i don't think it's too late i think it's a factor of like there's a lot of things you could do what should you do you know that's true but the bike as a training device is exceptional because it's almost like a data extraction machine like the amount of data and feedback that you can get um from the bike is probably superior to what you get when you're skiing right just in terms of like wattage and like all that all that how you can like calibrate and dial in your training and you can spend you can do back-to-back eight-hour rides i don't know what it's like in skiing and the toll that would take on your body but as a vehicle to develop your aerobic engine um i think i think it's a lot of similarities and i think the biggest difference is like you said i think in in cycling you have the all the data in in skiing that is actually difficult i mean the things we can measure is is you have a you don't have a power meter in your in your ski yeah we don't so so it's like i would say skiing is way more feeling based you know when i'm going out for a three-hour session i basically do it on feeling and you have heart you have chest heart rate yeah and that's that's kind of the only measurement we can use um but when i'm racing it's it's only it's all only feeling i don't ever look at my my heart rate during a race i just go there and take it step by step by by feeling do you wear the do you look at the data afterwards like are you wearing like a garmin or a similar type device when you're racing and i've always been or the last couple of years i've been just using my whoop here on the bicep as kind of during the races and i mean it's accurate enough i think i mean it's it's better to use a garmin in terms of like getting the but i get the picture and that's kind of what i'm interested in because um for me it doesn't change anything if my heart rate was 190 or 185 it doesn't change anything before the race that i'm going to do next day because the routines the recovery parts the nutrition part is is still more or less the same yeah have you ever trained with christian or gustav no i haven't have you met olav uh their their coach you guys would get along he is a part of the he's part of the unix team as well now he is okay cool uh but yeah he's a he's an interesting guy and uh what he has done with the yeah with triathlon in in norway and i mean in the world i mean he has the measurements and all the things and data they have collected over the years it's it's just insane yeah i mean for someone like yourself who's an experimenter and is always trying to you know find that that new thing or that edge uh you know olav's like catnip for you yeah you guys should definitely i think so i think so not to replace your grandfather i'm sure he knows a lot but like olav is a different animal yeah absolutely and he's yeah his vision and everything i think it's it is impressive to to see what they have accomplished as well what's cool about you also is that this is a family affair you got your grandfather as your coach uh your dad is your manager yeah your mom handles the finances and your brother is like your social media manager right like he's he's driving the youtube uh channel for you so it's all in the family yeah uh we started when i was 18 and i decided i wanted to do youtube i said to my brother I'll need someone to edit it so he by himself went on YouTube and learned how to edit on YouTube you know and that was how it's how it started and then when I started first started winning races my granddad has always been my coach so it was very natural to continue to have him since we had made that success already when I was 20.

44:02But when I first won a World Cup race, it was just overnight things changed back home. And there was like a lot of interest in terms of sponsorships, media, all the things that kind of comes along to winning a race. And I needed help. and my dad was just was able to first he started helping me 50 % and then he worked 50 % but then over the last years it's just that has developed to 100 % work and that's the only thing he do these days and I feel really privileged to have like the family around me to be able to join me on to have my brother here join me on a trip like that to give him the opportunity to see the walk-up final on Sunday to to experience the same things that I have been experiencing it's it's really cool and I think it has been a nice thing to have the family and then you also have like the it also comes with some challenging for sure challenges you know when you don't want to ruin like the family relationship um so i feel like that's kind of the balance we always have been uh trying to to to figure out in terms of like when you have a sunday dinner you want to talk about the family not about me racing you know and uh that's kind of them that's kind of the challenging part.

45:33In addition to your insane training regimen, you're also known for having tremendous technical intelligence. You know intuitively when to conserve your energy, when to draft, when to make your move. It's very strategic, this sport, the more I dig into it. um so i want to talk a little bit about that as well as the origin of this technique that you developed this running uphill technique that has become kind of your signature move yeah so i feel like my the technical aspect has always been something uh like to talk a little bit about earlier was that was something we decided to do at a really young age because i felt like that was important but um over the last years it you know uh with so many mass starts that we have and so many sprints I think I have developed like a way of seeing things that I've always been really curious about how I can do things better and I've always been very analytic in terms of how I do things and I think I have brought that into my sport as well in terms of how I look to a sprint race there is things that I want to I kind of set a plan in terms of what I can do and I really spend time looking back at what I did last year like how did I how did I manage to do This turn has always been fascinating about watching Formula 1 in terms of how they do the curves and stuff like that that I can bring into my own sport that hopefully helped me to get a little bit of an advantage against my competitors.

47:33And, uh, I think the tactical and technical aspect is for me, what I think is the most fun about my sport. Yeah. The only, like the closest parallel to me is watching a bunch sprint in a cycling race. So if you're Mark Cavendish or you're some other sprinter, like it's not who wins isn't necessarily a function of who's going to generate the most power out of their legs. Yes, it's their lead out, but it's also this sixth sense of like where to be. You know, there's so many people like in that pack angling to be in the right position to cross the finish line first. And they're just our people like Marquette.

48:14They know exactly where to be. They can see the future and they can anticipate where everyone's going to move. And, you know, when you have these mass starts and you're in these sprints, it's like so much of it is like, where do I need to be? Like right place, right time. So that I can set myself up to be in position to win this race. Yeah, I agree. And I think, um, I think if we have done like a hundred meter sprint, just flat out. Like track and field. Yeah. I think I would, I don't necessarily, I don't think I'm the fastest one or at least not the one that are having the most amount of power.

48:54but I think if we take it at the end of a race it's different because then I kind of when my legs are where everyone is a little bit tired I think it is way different compared to when everyone is fresh but also uh just like you said having I have done so many sprints that I kind of know where I need to be at the right time and I think that is something you develop if you are a little bit analytic but also if you have done it enough times yeah that's kind of something so I think like when you look at Mark Cavendish and see how many wins he have you know he has over so many years developed so many so much knowledge and so much experience in terms of where he needs to be in all different kind of finishes you know if it's uphill if it's flat if it's slightly downhill there is like he kind of knows it and I think um that's something you need to work on but also i think some of the it's just it's just the way you you are i guess yeah yeah a sixth sense but also a muscle memory that comes with experience yeah the uphill running the the clobo run so this is pretty revolutionary we're used to seeing people go uphill on skis in that kind of v motion right that's how everyone has already done it and the idea being like this is a moment to conserve energy.

50:37Like, but instead you're like, I'm going to burn all my matches and just go flat out. Like the amount of energy expenditure that is required for you to do that has to be insane. So it's a gamble, right? When you do it, like you can't just do that all the time because you're really redlining yourself to the absolute max when you do that. And I even read that you can't even train it that often because it's so depleting. yeah and I feel like I think you can you saw it a little bit during the Olympics but there was a few guys that were kind of burning their tank uh already in the quarterfinal and semifinal and when they came to the final and we increased the speed a little bit they were just couldn't do it they were not able to to to do it so um that technique came from me and my granddad working on a session in Trondheim where I was struggling with some bad grip on my skis.

51:36And instead of just putting on more and more grip, we decided, okay, I'll just jump outside the tracks and I tried to run a little bit. And I saw that I was actually able to have a better grip, but so I didn't need to put on more wax. And then we just decided, okay, let's, this is interesting let's come back tomorrow and then we we take the time we start running from the bottom with one pair of skis with a little bit less grip run on the side of the the hill and we take the time and the time is say 50 seconds and then we go back and put another pair of skis with more grip and we go inside the track but we are gliding kind of the more regular skiing and we see that okay we're using 52 seconds okay then we have like an edge share this is this is interesting in terms of how we can how can we develop this and this was how we we started with a running part and then over years we have just tried to develop it year by year uh but like you said we're not able to do that very often because it just i'm burning so much energy and i i know that like every the start of every season we have like this race in finland where we have like this last uphill and everyone is running the same way now like everyone is now everyone's copying you but just because uh they've seen you do it doesn't mean they could do it No, and then you see like everyone is just at the end of the race and the day after.

53:16All the people that have done the sprint is just completely destroyed in their muscles. And it is the same for me as well. But so you see over a weekend where if you're going to do three races, doing this on a Friday, it is brutal for the next couple of days of racing. But on the other hand, I think that is kind of something you learn over years as well in terms of how do I save as much energy as possible, but just use enough to win. I would say it's an interesting story because it started just a little bit random on a training day in Trondheim, but ended up being something that has really changed the way we do uphill skiing.

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55:43When that clip of you running uphill went viral at the Olympics, were you aware of how that had caught fire or were you just in your bubble? i knew it when i came back to the hotel and kind of saw that everything i mean my my phone was just blowing up so because i knew that in during the race and everything when i when i was running up that hill because i knew when i started the final when i started and put some speed on the first half part of the final and i saw that people were struggling i kind of knew that okay this is today I'm gonna win and then when I put my my full speed on on the last uphill I was like I I felt like I was like this this is it now I feel like I'm I'm really hitting every single push that I'm making and I know that no one else is able to to follow this speed especially because we went quite fast the first half part of the race and just turning your head on the top of the hill and just seeing that you have a huge gap it was i mean that was an amazing feeling but i didn't understand it because i didn't knew how it was looking before i was come back to the hotel and i saw the video myself and i was like that looks pretty good so yeah it was like and if you're in your world like people have seen you do that before but for the average person it was like what is going on like i've never seen anything like that before yeah i mean but i think that's kind of the cool part about the olympics as well because there is you're able to broadcast sports that over a world where people normally don't pay attention to it and i think it's it is because it is every fourth year it is but it is something special olympics is something special and uh even though for me personally just winning the year before uh the six goals in trondheim which is where i grew up you know and having hundreds of thousands of people in the forest watching me win the last race on the 50k in trondheim personally was a big success for me because it was in my hometown but no one out there is paying attention to a world world championship in Norway but when you come to the Olympics you can just you can just feel the difference it's just uh way different but um on the other hand it was it was cool to finally have like a Olympics in Europe where it's a little bit easier for everyone to pay attention you know we have the one in Pyeongchang and the one in Beijing I mean it was those was cool Olympics as well but it was it's harder because of the time zone and everything but just having it in Europe and knowing that it's in 2034 it's going to be in Salt Lake it's just yeah I think that's special my understanding is that you were much more nervous about the world championships in your hometown the year before the Olympics than you were at the Olympics.

59:11And the fact that you walked away from that with six golds allowed you to relax at the Olympics. Do you think that having that experience in Trondheim the year before allowed you to like, gave you the confidence and the ability to just kind of be yourself at the Olympics and not get caught up in all of the anxiety and insanity of it so you could you could unleash those performances yeah i think so because i think like for me personally that the world championship was so it was so huge you know it was i was so nervous in front of the the world championship and i kind of was isolated again with myself and my dad for months prior to the to the world championship and I didn't see anyone I was just really locked in together with my dad and when the world championship was was finished I felt like okay I'm super tired mentally I feel like I'm just really exhausted and then I over the During that spring, I kind of figure out, okay, I need to do some changes in terms of who I bring with me and how I do things.

1:00:30And one of my friends wanted to join before Olympics. And we were out on the altitude camps three times during the fall and during the winter. And just bringing new energy in, just having like a friend where I wasn't thinking that much about Olympics. you know we're just having fun I was doing everything right I was training well I was doing my recovery eating healthy but it was it was a factor where fun was an important part of the the daily routines and I think that really made a big difference because when I came into the Olympics I was like this is gonna be fun you know I feel like I'm for sure I'm nervous but This is something I know what to do.

1:01:19And then when the Olympics was over, you know, I wasn't that exhausted. I was just nice. This was a crazy fun experience. I wish it lasted longer, you know. And instead of after the World Championship, I just stayed in my bed for six days and was just completely, completely down. But after the Olympics, it was just, I want to do this more, you know? And that's an evolution from, was it some years prior when you basically isolated yourself and you didn't want to see anyone because you were afraid you were going to get sick and you wouldn't go out to dinner and you just basically like wouldn't let anyone come near you.

1:02:03I think that's kind of, especially after COVID, that was something we, because for us as a cross-country skier the worst thing that can happen is that you just get a little bit sick because then you're not able to perform and you're not able to race either but after COVID and everything it was just so many you started using the mask you are traveling you kind of save you try to like just stay away from yeah every person is a pending impending threat yeah and that's not a great mindset to walk around with for anybody no and it's it's not a healthy way of of living your life either and that's why i think when when the world championship was over and i said to my my dad like this this can't continue you know we need to do some changes I need to have some other things in my life that is pulling me away from being that strict because it is not healthy.

1:03:12And I feel like that's what we did prior to the Olympics. And I mean, I was traveling during the winter and I didn't even think about the mask. you know i was like uh i was i wouldn't have been here before the world championship you know now i'm here i feel really relaxed people are coughing on the street coughing on the side of me when i'm sitting on the you're in the petri dish of new york city right now so and yeah and i couldn't care you know and i think that's just a way more healthy way of living i i'm so glad that I'm I've understood that now and that I can yeah don't go back to that state um but you're still a maniac uh yeah like it's it's it's a rare individual who uh goes from the 14 year old who's getting middling results to the 15 year old who says I'm gonna be the best in the world so there is this uh constitutional degree of self-confidence that you're equipped with and I'm curious around your like how you train your mindset like do you have practices for that like do you pay attention to that you invest in the mental game because we can get into like a week in the life of your physical training but i'm interested in how you think about your mind i spend a lot of time practicing my mind and i think one of the things or where i spend the most time is that i I do a thousand hours of training every single year and I do so many sessions where I just go out three hours by myself in the forest and I'm running in the mud and it's just for me that's kind of my therapy where I work on my mind because that's where I visualize the races that's where I uh talk to myself and try to like find a balance in terms of where am I gonna use my my energy and where is it no point of of using it and so without like saying that I go to someone and talk to someone regularly I would say that I I still are spending so much time I mean it's still in my own head but it's like I still have some sort of plan in terms of when I'm out on a three-hour session it's like I really want to go through some things like okay this is something I would like to work on like the mental part and I think the mental part has shown me over the years like before the world championships I woke up the last two weeks even though I was sick four weeks before the world championship I was waking up two weeks before and I had so much pain in my throat like every single morning and my data and everything was like completely good but I just I felt like I was thinking myself sick every single morning that's interesting and that happened first time in 2018 just the anxiety and the fear of getting sick yeah created physical symptoms for because for me the worst thing that can happen is to get sick i'm not afraid of losing i'm not afraid of uh like that it's not going to do well but i'm the worst thing that can happen is that i get sick and not be able to be on the starting line starting line fighting for the the victory and And so that has, and it was better before the, before Olympics, because I feel like I have more, I'm more adapted to it.