07 Dec 2011
Coaching Tufte the Norwegian Way
Two things are enviable about Norway, their international success compared to the size of their rowing population and Olaf Tufte’s exceptional talent. For a country of 4.5 million and a competitive rowing population of about 600, Norway has managed to have Olympic medal winning teams for the past 34 years.
This summer five elite rowers represented Norway with three of them racing at Athens. They all made the final. One won gold.
At this year’s FISA coaches conference in Gifu,
“The structure is designed to support our top level athletes,” says Ovrebo. All Norway’s 53 plus clubs pay a fee to support the national team coach and any financial support from the national sporting body goes directly to the top level. “There is,” says Ovrebo, “no disagreement about this system.”
“The cooperation between athletes, coach and the Norwegian federation is vital,” says Ovrebo who is faced with the challenge of creating harmony among the small elite group that spend so much time together. The cold weather of Norway often forces the team south to find better conditions for training. Everyone has to be a team player to survive these long periods of time together.
Ovrebo admits that having such a small team has its advantages. “I spend very little time on selection,” says Ovrebo. ?The challenge is to get optimal development from each rower.?
This is the environment that has helped breed the fastest man in the world and current Olympic Champion Olaf Tufte.
The formula behind this success comes down to the culture says Ovrebo. “We accept that we have to work hard to achieve tough goals.” According to Ovrebo recognising the effect of training and the willingness to search for new knowledge has kept the Norwegian team at the top.
“There are no secrets in our training,” says Ovrebo. “Just hard work.” Hard work adds up to about 5,000 kilometres per year for Tufte which equals approximately 1,200 hours. Although Ovrebo admits, “I think Olaf does more.”
The main challenge for Ovrebo when it comes to his top athlete is to make him rest. When Ovrebo started coaching Tufte in 1997, Tufte was a rower, a farmer, a student and a door man! He was working day and night and the head coach was faced with an incredibly headstrong, physically talented individual. “We had many fights,” says Ovrebo.
Ovrebo tests his athletes regularly. Tufte has been measured at a massive 7.2 litre VO2 max (an average male has about 3.5 litres) with his top 2000 metre erg score clocking in at 5:46.
Tufte came from a sporting background in moto-cross but then rowing caught his fancy and it was not long before Tufte was on the national team and heading for the 1996 Olympic Games where he finished eighth in the four. This was followed by a silver medal in the double in 2000 with Fredrik Bekken. Bekken’s retirement forced Tufte into the single. The following year Tufte was World Champion.
In 2002 things did not go so well. The best learning often comes from failure says Ovrebo who categorises the 2002 season as “learning a lesson.”. Finishing third at the World Championships that year forced Tufte to reevaluate. “Olaf felt that he had wasted his race,” says Ovrebo. “and so he started to work on his mental capacity.”A top sports psychologist was brought in to help and by 2003 Tufte was back on track and finished the World Championships with gold.
For 2004 Ovrebo organised the season strictly around the goal of medaling at the Olympic Games. This meant that throughout the World Cup season Tufte was never at his best finishing fourth at Poznan, second at Munich and finally first at Lucerne. “We stay on mid to low level training for the majority of the time,” says Ovrebo ?specific race training came into the plan only in the final weeks before Athens.
The plan for the Olympics was to be so well prepared that even if Tufte raced at 90 percent he could still win a medal. “Olaf had put a lot of pressure on himself for Athens,” says Ovrebo, “so it was mostly a mental race.”
This strategy paid off. “The final wasn’t his best race,” says Ovrebo. Tufte was fourth coming out of the start, but had worked his way to the front by half way. Ovrebo describes the concept – the boat with the highest mean speed will win. “We don’t like fast starts. You only have to be leading the race when you cross the finish line.”
Fellow Norwegian and international coach Thor Nilsen summed up Tufte’s attitude. “I caught up with Olaf once when he was out on his bike. I asked him how much training he was doing.” Nilsen continues. “Just twice a day”, replied Tufte, ?I’m just cycling for relaxation before I go home to chop wood.” He attributes much of his strength development to cutting firewood by hand on his family’s farm.
Norway claims no secrets in their methods of training. As Ovrebo explains, “it’s just hard work and lots of it.”