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There’s no stopping Norwegian cross-country skiing powerhouse Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, a.k.a. “King Klæbo.”
The 29-year-old won his fifth gold medal at the Milano-Cortina Olympics in the men’s team sprint Wednesday morning, tying U.S. long-track speed skater Eric Heiden’s record at the Lake Placid Games in 1980.
It’s also his 10th overall gold at the Olympics, making him one of the top Olympic gold-winning athletes ever, with only U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps beating him with 23. And the Milano-Cortina Games are only Klæbo’s third Olympics.
Klæbo’s golds alone make up a third of Norway’s gold medals at these Winter Games, keeping the country on top in the medal standings.
And on top of all that, Klæbo remains number one in the World Cup standings and has beaten competitors at the Olympics with wide enough margins to casually cross the finish line, waving at the crowd as he goes.
“I think he’ll go down as the greatest of all time. To be racing the same era as him — it is crazy to witness that and to fight against that,” said Canadian skier Remi Drolet.
So what makes him that good? A combination of killer technique and a sharp diligence that has kept his eye on the prize for years.
Klæbo caught the world’s eye during these Games when a video of him running uphill in the men’s classic sprint final went viral — he averaged around 17 km/h up the seven per cent gradient.
His style has been dubbed by some as the “Klæbo run” — characterized by higher positioning of the knees with less gliding. The move is a full-on, powerful sprint uphill at the end of an already taxing race, leaving his competitors in the dust.
WATCH | Klæbo’s medal-winning uphill sprint:
But Klæbo wasn’t always such a good cross-country skier. His former coach Rune Sandøy told The New York Times’ The Athletic that Klæbo spent a part of his teenage years as an “average Joe” among his fellow skiers while training in Trondheim, Norway.
But he soon rose through the ranks to dominate at the races just a few years later.
“I pushed myself at the limit, with my legs and arms: everything I had, without doing any reasoning, without having any expectations,” Klæbo wrote in a 2022 blog post about his first time racing in a national sprint at age 17.
“I ended the qualification with the second best time, surprising myself, before the others. From 82nd in the nation to second, from unknown to a name that others were forced to read, intrigued, at the top of the scoreboard.”
Klæbo also credits his success to his 83-year-old grandfather and coach, who was sitting in the stands at the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium when he won gold on Sunday.
“He has been my coach since I was 15, and we have really, really worked for it. For me to have him here and to see this and what we have achieved over the years, it’s unbelievable,” he said after his win in Sunday’s 4 x 7.5-kilometre relay.
Klæbo will be competing in his final race of the Milano-Cortina Olympics at the men’s 50-kilometre mass start classic on Saturday.
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