Sonja Henie the best Norwegian athlete ever
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No Norwegian athlete, regardless of time period and sport, has achieved such status as Sonja Henie. No other Norwegian athlete has become a legend in a really great international sport. I think Sonja Henie is definitely Norway’s best sports man or woman of all time. No one above, no one on the side no one just behind. Why I think she’s so unique I’ll tell you about here.
3 Olympics and 10 World Cup gold
She made her Olympic debut as a 12-year-old girl in 1924. Then she got last place. 4 years later she won her first Olympic gold, something she also repeated in 1932 and 1936. She won her first World Cup gold in Oslo in 1927. After this she won every single World Cup until her very last in Paris in 1936.
In other words, in the period from 1927 to 1936, she won all the Olympic and World Cup competitions in figure skating for women. Sonja Henie became perhaps the very first female sports celebrity globally. .She has clearly been a central pioneer in women’s sports before World War II.
Sonja Henie movie star and prima donna
After the Olympics in 1936, she signed a contract to tour the United States. The contract made her a professional and that meant that she would no longer be able to participate in ordinary figure skating competitions. She also starred in several films which were a great success.
Sonja Henie is one of Norway’s most famous people outside Norway’s borders throughout all time. Known for its enormous significance for the development of women’s figure skating and for women’s sports in general. Known for her ice show and for her movies.
The war
During the 1936 Olympics, she greeted Hitler as most athletes did. The contrasts to this and Laila Schou Nilsen who did not make a Nazi greeting when she took bronze in the Olympics are great. Perhaps only the most proven reacted to this in 1936, but gradually, during the war and the years after the war, it became a big issue.
It also received a lot of attention when Norway asked Sonja Henie to contribute to building up the Norwegian training camp “Little Norway”. She refused to contribute, referring to the then neutrality of the United States in the war. Sonja Henie was at that time one of the richest women in the world. It was not until the United States became actively involved in the war that it changed its mind. Still, this was never forgotten in Norway along with her Nazi salute in 1936.
In my assessment as Sonja Henie as by far the greatest Norwegian athlete of all time, I completely ignore the fact that a naive girl made a Nazi greeting in 1936, as most others did. I see her refusal to contribute money to Little Norway as a sign that she did not want to challenge US neutrality at the time. In other words, my assessment is made completely without looking at her as anything other than an athlete.