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

Johannes Klæbo is the most decorated Winter Olympian in history—13 medals, 11 gold—but he was a middling 14-year-old who barely cracked the top half of local races. He hated losing so much that his mother suggested he find another sport. Instead, he and his grandfather, who has coached him since childhood, decided to focus on the one thing he could control: technique. They could not make him taller or stronger, so they made him technically precise. That decision, made when he was 14 and unremarkable, set the foundation for everything that followed.

The counterintuitive path to dominance

Klæbo did not specialize early. In Norway, children are encouraged to try multiple sports, and results are not emphasized until they are teenagers. Klæbo played soccer seriously, and he credits that cross-training with giving him a different kind of fitness and agility that later translated to skiing. His coach in those early years ran a challenge system where kids earned points for showing up to practice and competing in playful, unconventional relays—one ski, one pole, no poles at all. The goal was not to identify prodigies but to keep as many kids engaged as possible. Klæbo believes this culture of broad participation, rather than early specialization, is why a small country of 5.5 million people produces so many world-class athletes.