How Riiber jump-started Oftebro's triple Olympic gold for Norway

Jens Luraas Oftebro’s triple gold medal haul at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games may have seemed a logical progression for the serial Nordic Combined major championship medallist.

The 25-year-old Norwegian had, after all, won individual Large Hill silver and Team gold at Beijing 2022 and increased his World Championship collection to eight medals in the intervening years, including individual silvers in both 2023 and 2025

But Oftebro’s clean sweep of golds in Val di Fiemme – the latter in tandem with Andreas Skoglund in the Team Sprint - belied the early-season struggles of the Norwegian team as they wrestled with changes to their jumping technique initiated by the ‘King of Nordic Combined’, Jarl Magnus Riiber.  

The five-time overall World Cup champion, who retired at the end of last season, started a process last summer that yielded a spectacular reward at the Winter Olympics, but there was no guarantee it would end that way, or come to fruition so quickly.

“Jens has been number two in a lot of championships so he has a lot of experience of doing almost everything right,” Riiber said.

“But we had to improve when we saw what the Austrians have done on the jumping hill. We understood we had to take some steps to gain some momentum because they are such good skiers now, so even Jens can’t start 30 seconds or more behind all the time because that can be too much on Johannes Lamparter (AUT) and Stefan Rettenegger (AUT).

“I had to try to make some changes that I believed were important for the boys – to gain better set-ups, symmetry and technical decisions for them, together with the trainers.”

When you have been doing something a certain way your whole career, it is only natural to have some reservations when someone suggests a radically different approach. Even if that someone (Riiber, below) was arguably Nordic Combined’s finest exponent of the jumping art.

“It was hard. I had to convince Jens, Einar (Luraas Oftebro), Andreas (Skoglund) and also Kristjan (Ilves, EST), who works with us,” Riiber explained. “I told them. ‘This will feel quite uncomfortable in the beginning. I understand it is not the same feeling as you have had before, but I really think these changes can be good for the development of your technique. This is the future for you guys’.

“We could see that the best ski jumpers in the world were on this trajectory, so we had to go in this direction as well.

“In the beginning, for the first month they were like, ‘Are you sure about this?’ During the summer they had a lot of training volume in cross-country which can affect the jumping. But in early October, we were thinking ‘wow, this is actually starting to work’.

“It was looking good but then it got challenging because around 15 October, all the ski jumping hills in Norway closed because of the weather, so the boys didn’t have consistency in their jumping before the season started.”

Although Einar Luraas Oftebro (above) hinted at what was to come with a fourth place - his best World Cup finish at the time – on the opening World Cup weekend in Ruka, Finland, there were no Norwegian podiums in the first two rounds, including on home snow in Trondheim.

After the final round of last season in Lahti, Finland, where Riiber opted not to compete after calling time on his career the previous weekend, that made it three in a row. The last time there was no Norwegian man on the podium during a World Cup weekend prior to Lahti was the final round of the 2023-24 season, in Trondheim.

“We started the season quite bad, which was tough for the athletes because they started to doubt the direction we were going,” Riiber said.

“Then I said, ‘OK, we just need a little bit more time on this path’. I was really sure it would be good when we got some more training on the hills, not just in competition. The Austrians and Germans had perfect conditions in central Europe in that period."

Jens Luraas Oftebro finished second in both competitions in Ramsau, Austria, before Christmas, but that owed much to his renowned speed in the tracks, having placed 12^th on the hill on both days.

By the time the World Cup returned in Otepää in January though, Norway’s resurgence was gathering pace.

While Jens Luraas Oftebro finished a frustrating fourth in all three events, again largely due to his strength in the tracks, his elder brother Einar’s improved jumping earned him a first World Cup podium in a wind-affected Mass Start before his maiden individual win in the Gundersen (below) a day later, when Andreas Skoglund also claimed his first World Cup podium.

“The key thing with Einar is, he is the one with probably the highest potential,” Riiber noted. “He has a good sprint, good technique, good legs and he’s also a clever guy, but the main thing for Einar is he wasn’t able to jump well for five or six years.

“He’s a very tall guy, so he struggled with connecting the skis and just getting out normal jumps. So it was very cool to see the changes to his strategy and set-up, to the point where he had the highest points in the (Olympic Normal Hill) trial round and was fourth in the competition round. No-one could have seen that coming a year ago.”

By the next World Cup round in Oberhof, Germany, the improvements were evident. The ‘‘Oftebrothers’ were both on a World Cup podium together for the first time in the Compact (Jens first, Einar third) before finishing one-two (Jens earning a second successive win) in a Gundersen the next day (below), with both in the top six on the hill.

The Norwegian success continued in Seefeld, Austria, the final World Cup stop before the Winter Olympics, where Skoglund earned his second podium of a breakthrough season in a Mass Start and Jens Luraas Oftebro took third in a Compact before storming to victory in the concluding Gundersen to seal his first ‘Triple’. 

“Andreas (Skoglund) was always a good skier but he was a bad jumper!” Riiber joked. “But the trust is building up and they are very happy with the progress. What we are seeing now are the rewards for all that effort. It was like a collective lift.”

Ilves, who trains with the Norwegian team, topped the jumping standings in the Olympic Normal Hill competition at Predazzo, while Skoglund, although disappointed to ultimately finish fourth, put himself in the medal fight by finishing third on the Large Hill (below).

“It has been really good since the new year so I’m really happy with it,” said Skoglund, 24. “I’ve found a new way as to how I’m supposed to push, which seems to be working.”

Skoglund’s reward was a place in the Team Sprint alongside Oftebro, the pair finishing second only to Germany in the jumping on the Large Hill before Oftebro pipped Eero Hirvonen (FIN) in a pulsating sprint finish to earn his, and Norway’s, third gold and complete a clean sweep of Nordic Combined events at the Games.

“To change all the things we wanted in only half a year can be hard, but we started quite early and I told them, ‘We have to do this and we have to do it fast’” Riiber recalled. "It has been very rewarding for me and them."

For Riiber, this first season post-retirement has proved to be more taxing than he envisaged when he agreed to take up a role of ‘equipment expert’ with the Norway team.

“I was retiring because I wanted to be more at home with my family and then this project was taking so much time; I had to put so much work into it in the beginning - it was not what I was planning,” he smiled.

“But I was able to take a little bit of a break in winter with this ‘father permission’ we have in Norway, where you can take care of the children more for certain periods. It was very nice to get that break during the season, which I didn’t have for the last 10 years."

And how is the great man, still only 28, coping with life as an ex-athlete, having decided to retire after being diagnosed with the debilitating Crohn's disease, rather than continue to push himself to the limit in pursuit of more titles?

“I could be in better shape, but the good part now is I am not earning money based on what my body can do. I am earning a living a different way because of my health, so if things are not perfect, that is OK.

“As long as I have enough energy to go out and play with my children, then it’s OK.”

He may not be strapping on the skis himself anymore, but Riiber's commitment to writing new chapters in Norway’s Nordic Combined success story remains as strong as ever.