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Scandinavian countries have produced hundreds of great sportspeople in dozens of sports. Logically, most of those renowned athletes have left their marks in the snow. And yet Norway, Denmark and Sweden have also produced many Olympic medal winners and world/European champions in track and field athletics.

Hence, we’ve prepared an overview of the three most decorated Scandinavian athletes.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen

Born in 2000 in Sandnes, near Stavanger, in Norway, Ingebrigtsen showed his enormous talent already as a kid and started winning medals at important events as a teenager. In 2017, he became a double champion at the European Under-20 Championships in Grosseto, having won gold medals in the 3000m steeplechase and the 5000m races. 

In 2018, he started his medal-winning streak at regular championships. Since then, he has won three European Championships titles in 1500m and 5000m, respectively. 

A world champion in 5000m in Eugene (2022) and Budapest (2023), Jakob saw the pinnacle of his up-to-date career at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where he took the gold medal in the 1500m, and the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, in which he was the first one to cross the finish line in the 5000m. 

However, he came second at the Zurich Diamond League event in early September behind Yared Nuguse. As we’re getting closer to the final event of the 2024 Wanda Diamond League in Brussels, it will be interesting to see the final Diamond League standings in 1500m. 

While Jakob’s first place isn’t in danger, there’s a real traffic jam behind him, as five runners are within four points. The odds provided by the most relevant Norwegian betting platforms speak in favour of Timothy Cheruiyot, but Nuguse’s latest success speaks for itself (source: https://www.techopedia.com/no/gambling/bettingsider). 

And in 5000m, Ingebrigtsen currently takes the 9th position, 11 points behind the leader Yomif Kejelcha. While he can’t claim any of the first three positions, his odds of ending 6th or 7th are quite good.

Armand Duplantis

After Sergey Bubka set the 6.15m world record indoors in 1993 and the 6.14m in 1994, it took 20 years for his fellow pole vaulters to surpass his success. Once Renaud Lavillenie jumped over 6.16m in 2014, we saw the beginning of a new era of this wonderful track and field athletics discipline. 

In 2020, Armand Duplantis jumped over 6.17 m and broke Lavillenie’s record for the first time at an event in Poland, only to surpass his own record a few days later in Scotland. 

Between 2020 and September 2024, Duplantis has been breaking his own world records year after year, having jumped 6.25m at the Paris Olympics a month ago, set a brand new world record, and won back-to-back Olympic gold (he was the winner in the Tokyo Olympics, as well). 

And if we know that Armand Duplantis, who also goes by the nickname Mondo, was born in 1999, this is only the beginning of a consecutive record-breaking career. In an interview in the aftermath of the Paris Olympics, he said he was ready to hit the 6.30m mark. The odds given to him by track and field analysts to reach this goal in 2025 are pretty good. 

In the meantime, he ran a special 100m sprint event against Karsten Warholm in Zurich and won the race (10.37 sec).

Karsten Warholm

Another remarkable Scandinavian athlete, Karsten Warholm is one of the best 400m hurdles runners in the history of this discipline. Born in Ulsteinvik in 1996, Warholm is a triple World Championships winner (London 2017, Doha 2019, and Budapest 2023), and a triple European Championships winner (Berlin 2018, Munich 2022, and Rome 2024). 

The cherry on the top of his career up to now was the gold medal he ran to at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics games. At the Paris Olympics this year, Warholm won a silver medal. 

And in the spectacular race against Duplantis at Zurich Weltklasse, mentioned above, he ran 100m in 10.47 seconds, which is a nice result even for a 100 m sprinter, let alone for a 400m hurdler. 

Already a legend of athletics and the 400m hurdles discipline, we’re yet to see how he’ll cope with the new generation of hurdlers.