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

**Rich Roll** (0:01)
There goes Klæbo. The amount of energy expenditure that is required for you to do that has to be insane.

**Johannes Klæbo** (0:10)
I saw the video myself and I was like, that looks pretty good.

**Rich Roll** (0:15)
Johannes Klæbo. 13-time Olympic medalist, 11 gold medals, the most gold medals won at a single Winter Olympics, most career gold medals won by any Winter Olympic athlete. Like, it's insane what you've accomplished.

**Johannes Klæbo** (0:31)
I always had this mindset where I hate to lose. The feeling of winning a race is amazing. The feeling of becoming second is so much worse. It is a mental game. You are saying that, okay, we just go over the next hill, the next hill, and then you just continue to trick your head to just move a little bit more.

**Rich Roll** (0:51)
So a thousand hours of training, what does it look like?

**Johannes Klæbo** (0:54)
Two and a half hours of...

**Rich Roll** (0:57)
Oh, really? Oh, interesting.
You're very much known as somebody who's modernized your sport and brought it into 2026, which in the United States, is, you know, it's a relatively obscure sport. I would say that most people had almost, at least in the United States, like had very little connection with this sport until they saw you essentially, you know, running uphill in your skis at 10.3 miles an hour at sub-six-minute pace, and just minds were blown when that viral moment occurred. And that has probably done more for the, just awareness of the sport than anybody has done in the last 30 or 40 years.

**Johannes Klæbo** (1:42)
That's probably true. And I think, I think it's good that people can actually see when you actually put the numbers on it, you know, when you see like there is, because we are having kilometers per hour, but then you see like, okay, it's 18.2 kilometers per hour in the uphills. You see the incline just for people to understand and get to get to know it a little bit more. Cause then it's easier for people to, to really understand how, how fast we are running those hills.
But yeah, I, it was a cool moment to see that so many people were paying attention to what we are doing. I mean, cross-country skiing has always been a really small sport, but it's, it's getting bigger. And I think the, what has been my goal is to, to tell people and try to show people how healthy of a sport cross-country skiing is because you're using your legs, you're using your upper body, and then you're also working your endurance. And those three things you're working out at the same time when you're out there. And it also is a really low risk of getting injured. Like in terms of when you're running or biking or whatever, it's like, there is not that many sports that are doing upper body, lower body and endurance at the same time. And swimming, swimming would probably be the closest comp. That's probably the closest one. And I think those two sports or in general, a sport like that is really efficient for people to stay in good shape. And staying healthy and what we see over the last years is that people are paying more attention to their health, trying to do the right workouts, eat the right things and stuff like that.
Which I think is really cool because I think we are in a more healthier way we are doing things these days than we did before.

**Rich Roll** (3:43)
There's this sense within the endurance community. Like if you're an endurance athlete, like it's one thing to be a runner or triathlete, you know, one of these, you know, kind of sports. But the sport that commands the most amount of respect among the people who are steeped in endurance is cross-country skiing. They're like, that's where the fittest people in the world are. Like it's a different breed. Like the degree of endurance and strength and agility that is demanded in order to be at an elite level in this sport is incomparable to any other endurance pursuit. Like it is like the, you know, kind of apex predator of fitness. And I want to, I want you to like kind of explain, like the rigor of this sport that you dominate.
Like what goes into being able to compete at the highest level in cross-country skiing?

**Johannes Klæbo** (4:42)
Oh, I think there is, there is a lot of factors that are important. But one thing is, you definitely need to have like the VO2 max. Like the VO2 is important because you are, we're doing so many up and downs in terms of like a race. It's say it's a 10k race. It's basically 22 minutes of full speed from start to finish. It's a lot of uphills, a lot of downhills, but it's at the end, the VO2 max needs to be so high that you're able to, if you're gonna perform at the highest level. And then another aspect of it is the technical part.