SI:AM | Johannes Høsflot Klæbo Is the Breakout Star of These Winter Olympics

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. If you’re craving more Johannes Høsflot Klæbo content, subscribe to my daily Olympics podcast with Mitch Goldich, Daily Rings.

In today’s SI:AM:
🇳🇴 Norway’s cross-country superstar
🦴 Meet Mystique Ro
🏂 Chloe Kim falls short

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History is within reach

Two weeks ago, I never would have guessed that I’d become obsessed with a cross-country skier from Norway. But how could I not love Johannes Høsflot Klæbo?

Klæbo just tied a Winter Olympics record with his eighth career gold medal and could very well add three more before the Milan Cortina Games are over. His win in today’s men’s 10-km freestyle race was his third gold medal of these Olympics, having already won the individual sprint and 20-km skiathlon events.

The results are impressive enough, but what really makes Klæbo such a joy to watch is the way he wins. You may have seen a viral video of Klæbo sprinting uphill at an inhuman pace. The clip, which comes from Tuesday’s individual sprint race, shows Klæbo peaking at 11.4 mph while ascending a steep incline. It’s Klæbo’s speed up this particular hill near the end of the course that makes him so hard to beat. Other skiers appear to be in contention until the moment Klæbo begins to scale the hill. In head-to-head races, it’s easy to see his competitors begin to fall back. In the staggered-start interval races (like Friday’s 10k), the true extent of Klæbo’s climbing superiority isn’t fully clear until he reaches the next checkpoint and the clock displays the size of his lead.

For the uninitiated, there are two different styles of skiing in cross-country: classical and freestyle. In classical, skiers keep their skis parallel to each other and glide through grooves in the snow. Freestyle is more like skating on skis, with the athletes angling their skis and using their legs to drive themselves forward. There are also two different categories of race format. In mass-start races, all skiers begin at once. In interval starts, the start times are staggered such that only one skier leaves the starting line at a time.

Klæbo has mastered both styles and both race formats. Friday’s 10k was considered one of his weaker events, but he still came away with another gold, beating France’s Mathis Desloges by 4.9 seconds. Fellow Norwegian Einar Hedegart took bronze, 14 seconds behind Klæbo.

Klæbo burst on the scene at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, where he won three gold medals. His prowess on the hills was also a key to his success there. Norwegian media took to calling one segment of the course the “Klæbo-bakken” or “Klæbo hill.” He added two more golds in Beijing, as well as a silver and a bronze.

Klæbo now has 10 total Olympic medals after Friday’s victory, tied for sixth most among winter Olympians. He needs two more to tie his countryman Bjørn Dæhlie for most medals among male cross-country skiers and five more to tie the overall record for most medals at the Winter Games, held by Marit Bjørgen (another Norwegian cross-country athlete).

But one all-time record is well within reach. He is already tied for the most golds in Winter Olympics history with eight, joining Dæhlie, Bjørgen and Ole Einar Bjørndalen (a biathlete from—you guessed it—Norway). Klæbo has three events left at these Olympics and will be favored to win gold in all of them.

Next up for Klæbo is the men’s 4x7.5-km relay event on Sunday, where Norway will be a heavy favorite. The Norwegians have won seven of the nine medals awarded in men’s cross-country skiing thus far. There’s another team event—the team sprint freestyle—on Feb. 18, and Klæbo’s last event will be the individual 50-km classical on Feb. 21. Klæbo is the reigning world champion in the 50.

If Klæbo can capture gold in each of his three remaining events, he would become the first athlete in Winter Olympics history to win six gold medals at a single Games. The record is currently held by Team USA’s Eric Heiden, who won all five speed skating events at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. In fact, all Klæbo needs to do to make history is win any sort of medal in each of his last three events. No Winter Olympian has ever won more than five medals in the same year.

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The top five…

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5. The pure chaos of the Olympic luge relay event.
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3. Tage Thompson’s slick backhand goal for Team USA against Latvia.
2. A really nice layup by Ole Miss’s Cotie McMahon.
1. Nikola Topić’s first NBA points for the Thunder. Topić was selected with the 12th pick in the 2024 draft but sat out last season with a torn ACL. In October, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer and began chemotherapy.