JOHANNES HOSFLOT KLAEBO : NORWAY'S GLOBAL HONOURS

It seemed like such a good idea at the beginning - to win every race at a cross-country skiing meet, everything from a sprint to the sport's version of a marathon, the 50-kilometer race.

But then Johannes Høsflot Klaebo, the Norse force of nature, did that at the 2025 Nordic world ski championships. And that's when an even sillier idea arose - let's do this at the Olympics.

A little more than a year later, Klaebo is sitting in a New York hotel enjoying his new status as one of the greatest athletes in Olympic history, in a typically Norwegian way.

There are just a handful of people in the 120-year-history of the modern Olympics who have done something like Klaebo did in Italy in February.

This is the plan he and his grandfather and coach Kare Høsflot worked out long ago, when most people would have said being the best in both sprinting and distance racing just might be a bridge too far.

'' We wanted to do well in the sprint first, then develop the endurance,'' Klaebo said. '' The plan all the way has been about trying to make sure of that, or seeing if that is actually possible to race both and to be able to perform well in both. I feel like we've definitely succeeded on that part..''

Klaebo, 29, is already one of the greatest skiers to click into a binding. He won six Olympic gold medals in 16 days, including five individual gold medals and one team relay.

The World Students Society thanks Matthew Futterman.