Norwegians: who’s the bigger star, Magnus or Jakob?

Here are the unofficial rules of chess track:

1) the board shall be placed on a table or whatever a couple meters before the start/finish line.

2) white lines up behind the start/finish line, and black lines up behind the 200m waterfall.

3) When the starter signals, white makes the first chess move and runs. Black can start running immediately.

4) each time a runner approaches the start/finish line, he/she must stop and make a legal chess move before crossing it, or be disqualified and go home devastated.

5) the match continues until one of the following happens:

a: one runner catches the other
b: one chess player wins the game
c: one runner is DQd by stepping off the track or failing to make a legal move between laps
d: both players agree to a draw or a draw is forced in the chess match, except
e: in the case of stalemate (no legal move) that player may not cross the start-finish line and must wait for the opponent to either catch them or DNF

Instagram :

Haaland 18.3 million followers

Jakob 441k followers

Casper Rudd 279k followers

ABBA.

Someone cannot tell the difference between Norway and Sweden.

The band from Norway is called "A-ha" and they aren't as popular as ABBA.

So you don´t count indoors WRs?

yeah, but not if you factor in the relative popularity of football versus athletics. Introducing a relative popularity scaling index, JI may very well be more popular.

Or Ole Einer Bjoerndalen

Ylvis with a billion views

This.

Good idea, but needs to be modified. Jakob would catch Magnus somewhere around 800-1200m, well before Magnus has a chance to get Jakob in any trouble.

1) There are two chess boards, one at 200m and the other at the finish. An announcer is calling the moves so that both boards are synced up. That might slow Jakob down enough to make it interesting.

2) They play through 5 moves into the opening before the race starts. Jakob now has to stop and think about each move instead of just trying to move a piece without knocking over the board while running sub 60s second laps.

3) A pursuit mixed relay. Magnus gets Karoline Grovdal (14:31 runner). Jakob gets Monika Machlik, a 25 year old FIDE 2100 that looks like she could run.

Ruud has the best golf swing of the three.

The standard rules are for ordinary runners not vastly different in speed. A handicap can be arranged when there is a vast difference. Starting 5 moves in would be enough, Jakob would already have to spend several seconds studying the board, Magnus would move in 1 second

Data point: I don't follow chess and I've heard of him. If you've heard of someone in sport/activity that you don't care about, that person must be pretty famous.

Morten Gamst Pederson.

The streets never forget.

Hi from a Canadian runner and chess player who just visited Norway for a long trip.

I didn't survey any Norwegians there, but I think that Jakob and Magnus are pretty close. Both seemed to be in the newscasts/papers day-to-day, Jakob probably a bit more so but the summer was full of competitions and he did very well. Magnus might take a lead if he played and won another WC match. Pretty sure any Norwegian not under a rock would recognize the names.

Warholm seemed to be a step below this, but again that is probably affected by his relative absence from competition and wins this season. He clearly has many endorsement deals and is in all sorts of ads i Norge.

Of course, soccer is huge and Erling Haaland is well known playing for Man City and also the national team. Bigger than even the most successful runner or chess player could ever be, barring a Bolt-like phenomenon. (Bjørn Dæhlie was on that level to Norwegians in his time, and is still a household name decades after his exploits.)

Kristian Blummenfelt 🏊‍♂️🚴‍♂️🏃‍♂️

Was going to say the same thing.

I think this. KB is way more dominant in triathlon than Jakob in running. KB is winning/breaking records in short course (literally gold medal) and long course races (ironman world record holder and world champion) in the same season. That would be like Jakob winning the 1500 olympic gold and then setting a half marathon or marathon world record (with a world championship to boot) later that year. What KB is doing right now has literally never been done in the sport. Turning it into just a popularity contest tho and of course it it someone like Haaland wins as the world wide appeal of soccer exceeds chess, triathlon and running combined. I dont know enough about chess, but Magnus seems pretty untouchable so I would guess he is on a level of KB and above Jakob.