Anne Marte Pensgaard: Why does Norway dramatically outperform at the Olympics and what can business learn from it?
In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen
Norges Bank Investment Management
4.7 • 236 Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
What's the secret behind Norway's unmatched Winter Olympics dominance? Nicolai Tangen sits down with Anne Marte Pensgaard — Professor of Sports Psychology at Olympiatoppen and a driving force behind Norway's Olympic mental training — to unpack the mindset behind the medals. They explore the "Norwegian model" of youth sport, the science of focus and psychological safety, why early specialisation can do more harm than good, and how the principles of elite sport apply to building high-performing teams and organisations. Anne Marte also shares her belief that joy, community, and gratitude are non-negotiable ingredients for sustained success.
In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday.
The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen and Sebastian Langvik-Hansen. Background research was conducted by Karoline Woie, Anders Meland and Bjørn Mannsverk.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, I'm Nicola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Soan Wealthun, and today we are doing something really great fun, because no way happened to smash every record in the Winter Olympics. |
| 0:12.5 | And today we are joined by Anna Marta Penscoor, who is the professor of sports psychology, and he's basically the person who's shaped the whole mental training of the |
| 0:21.4 | Norwegian Olympic athletes. So warm welcome. Thank you so much. |
| 0:25.6 | Now, how do you explain all these medals? |
| 0:38.3 | Oh, that's a really complex question. |
| 0:41.3 | It goes a long way back because we tend to think about what we do today. |
| 0:47.3 | But of course it has been a long tradition for maybe 20, 30 years now, where we have worked on this culture. |
| 0:53.3 | So I think there's many pieces in that puzzle. |
| 0:56.9 | When did you decide to, because it was after Turin, I guess, which was, |
| 1:00.8 | when did you think that, hey, we need to do some stuff here? |
| 1:03.2 | Well, it's even later, or before that, actually, |
| 1:08.8 | after the Calgary games, we didn't take any medals. |
| 1:11.6 | And then we started to think, what should we do about this? |
| 1:15.6 | And we had to do something about the whole top sport level system, |
| 1:19.6 | and also work more together as teams, and also think long term to develop athletes. |
| 1:26.6 | Okay, so you are in Calgary. |
| 1:28.8 | It's the worst game the country has ever had. |
| 1:32.4 | So you sit down, what do you do? |
| 1:34.5 | What kind of plan do you come up with? |
| 1:35.8 | Unfortunately, I was not there. |
| 1:37.4 | So I started later. |
| 1:39.9 | But then Torol Riemjore, who was the one who kind of founded Olympiatoppen, |
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