My Olympics: Casper Ruud

Norway made history at the 2022 Beijing Olympics with a record-breaking 16 gold medals, the most by a country in a single Winter Games. Fast forward two years and one of the athletes Norway will have its eyes on at the Summer Games in Paris is the country's highest-ranked tennis player, Casper Ruud.

The 25-year-old, who has won 11 ATP Tour titles and made three major finals, looks to become the first Norwegian male to earn a medal in tennis. Ahead of Ruud’s campaign, the No. 9 in the PIF ATP Rankings sat down with ATPTour.com to discuss the Olympic sports he enjoys watching and which Norwegian athletes have inspired him.

What Olympic sport do you think you would be good at?
I think I'm just going to stick with my favourite sport outside tennis, which is golf. I love golf. That's my favorite sport outside of tennis. I love playing, I love watching it. Easy for me to go with that one.

For which sports do you think you would not be well suited?
Probably gymnastics or swimming or these things that require an incredible amount of body control.

Which Norwegian Olympians have you looked up to?
Lately we've had a few gold medals in the Summer Olympics as well, with Jakob Ingebrigtsen winning the 1500 metres distance running gold medal in Tokyo. Karsten Warholm set a new world record at the 400 meter hurdle in Tokyo and won gold there so the last Summer Olympics was really good for Norway, so hopefully we can keep it up this year as well.

Is there an Olympic athlete from another country you have looked up to?
I think the highlight always for me was watching the 100 meter sprint, Usain Bolt was the fastest man alive, fastest man on the planet is always one of the highlights, so I guess watching him win gold and doing his ‘Arrow’ signature pointing celebration. I can't even remember if it was before or after, but that was always fun to watch.

What are you most looking forward to about the Olympic Village?
I think it will be fun. Tennis in a way is a bit of a lonely sport at times, because you travel around by yourself. Of course you have your team and everything, but sometimes you're by yourself stuck in a hotel room for most nights, during the year. So being in the Olympic Village together with other athletes, maybe sharing experiences or talking about sports in general is going to be hopefully a fun experience.

What is your country best known for in the Olympics?
I would say the Winter Olympics. We typically end up doing pretty good on the statistics in the Winter Olympics. Most of the time we're able to win most golds because the biathlon and the cross country skiers and alpine downhill skiers, they kind of do rack up gold medal after gold medals, so I would say the Winter Olympics is more of Norway's thing, but hopefully can be a surprise this year.