AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
There are just under a hundred days until the Winter Olympics, and one of the world's best male athletes is quietly training here in the U.S. Johannes Klaebo is on track to become the Winter Games' winningest athlete ever. He's a household name in his home country of Norway - not so much here. And as Nat Herz reports, that's part of the draw.
NAT HERZ: Last winter at the every-other-year world championships of cross-country skiing, Johannes Klaebo was king.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: The greatest skier of all time wins the 50k at the world championships in Trondheim. It's six for six - the unthinkable.
HERZ: Trondheim is his hometown in ski-crazy Norway. And in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans, Klaebo did something no man had ever done before. He won gold in all six of the races, from a three-minute sprint to a 30-mile marathon.
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HERZ: Klaebo is a superstar in Norway. He has movie-star looks, a Viking build. He endorses everything from gas stations to running shoes to a line of products that style his famously flowing blond hair.
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JOHANNES KLAEBO: (Speaking Norwegian).
HERZ: In America, though?
KLAEBO: What I like here is that it's so quiet. It's so easy. You can go into stores.
HERZ: Klaebo is talking to me on a side street in Park City, Utah, where he's been doing a yearly fall training camp and where nobody is asking him for selfies. Klaebo is always happy to sign autographs, but he says Utah gives him a break from the attention. It also gives him a chance to boost his fitness at higher altitude, with what he says is an unusual level of access to both big hills as well as flatter terrain for easier workouts.
KLAEBO: This is really something different from what we are used to in Europe. I don't think people understand it before they get here.
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HERZ: On a crisp fall morning, Klaebo and one of his Norwegian teammates run through a tough workout. They're stabbing metal-tipped ski poles into the pavement, pushing uphill on wheeled devices called rollerskis, grinding to the top of a steep road going over 10,000-foot Guardsman Pass. Every few minutes, they stop, prick their fingers and squeeze a drop of blood into a device that analyzes their lactic acid level - a measure of how hard they're pushing themselves.
UNIDENTIFIED ATHLETE: (Speaking Norwegian).
HERZ: There's little traffic on the roads, and cars give them a wide berth, which Klaebo says is different from some places in Europe.
KLAEBO: The cars - they are passing us in a crazy speed and really close to us. And it seems like everyone here is a little bit calmer and takes things a little bit slower.
HERZ: Utah wasn't always a sure bet for Klaebo. When he planned his first visit, Norwegian team staff reached out for advice to Luke Bodensteiner, a retired American Olympian who now runs a cross-country skiing venue in Utah. Bodensteiner says the Norwegians made it clear they weren't happy about their national sporting treasure taking off for a few weeks in America.
LUKE BODENSTEINER: The skiing doctrine would say, don't fly across the pond. Fly over the Atlantic as few times as you possibly can, ever. Jet lag, getting sick on the plane - despite that, he was bold and said, hey, I - you know, I've heard it's great training over there, and I want to experience it and see if it's everything that it's cracked up to be. And he's been back for four years now.
HERZ: Megan Stowe, a Utah-based physical therapist who works with Klaebo, says one of his strengths is challenging conventional wisdom. He's also really into acupuncture and recently tested out an artificial intelligence-informed strength-training regime.
MEGAN STOWE: Johannes is open to anything that helps him perform and helps him recover. And he's never said, no, I'm not going to try that.
HERZ: It's no small thing for Klaebo to do his yearly training camp in Utah, though. He brings over seven or eight pairs of ski poles, several pairs of rollerskis and a bike. He says it would be safer to go to the Alps. It's closer to home if something goes wrong, but...
KLAEBO: I think I kind of like taking risks, and I like to do things my own way.
HERZ: After four years, Klaebo knows the twists and turns of Park City's roads and where to find the Patagonia outlet downtown. But even for a man who could retire as the greatest ever in the history of his sport, the $1.8 million median home price may be too high for him to settle here permanently.
KLAEBO: I think I picked the wrong sport in terms of economics part. If I should buy a house up here, I think I should have started doing soccer or...
HERZ: Yeah...
KLAEBO: ...Something else. But then I probably haven't needed a house up here.
HERZ: Klaebo is committed to racing the next two Olympics. By the 2034 games, he could be past retirement age. But those Olympics just happen to be in Utah, and Klaebo says it's going to be hard to say no.
For NPR News, I'm Nat Herz in Park City, Utah. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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