Olaf Tufte - Double Olympic champion
In Norway, G4S is in partnership with Olaf Tufte, the world's best rower and double Olympic champion.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics and 2008 Summer Olympics he won the gold medal in the men's single sculls. He won silver in the men's double sculls at the 2000 Summer Olympics together with Fredrik Bekken. He has also won two World Championships in the single sculls, in 2001 and 2003.
When not rowing, Olaf earns a living growing cereals at the family farm in the Nykirke part of Horten - he manages to combine training and working on the farm, including carrying heavy sacks of grain while running to the barn.Olaf is a member of Horten Roklubb, one of the most successful Norwegian rowing clubs of all time.
Olaf is also the organizer of the the yearly Tufte Farmer Challenge, an untraditional competition between some of Norway's top athletes; the events include tractor tyre flipping, sawing, axe throwing, car pulling, shotgun shooting.
The partnership with Olaf started back in the beginning of 2007. G4S gives financial support to Olaf Tufte and Team Tufte and sponsors one of the events at the Tufte Farmers Challenge.
Through the partnership Olaf hosts teams of G4S employees at his farm and is a motivator for sales personnel. He writes e-mails from his training camps which are posted on the company's intranet.Rowing is not a large sport in Norway, and if it had not been for G4S Olaf would probably not had the finance to train for yet another Olympic Gold. Even after his second Olympic Gold (from Beijing Olympic), Norwegian sponsors prefer sponsoring football and skiing.
Olaf is a great G4S ambassador: he has a great personality and lives the G4S values.
He wants to give something back to the sport he loves, so as his heroes and former champions trained him, he now trains some of the juniors on the national team. He has established Team Tufte which gives the chosen juniors an opportunity to be coached by him and getting their education. Olaf makes sure school comes first.
Olaf is training hard for the London Olympics and hopes to row the double sculler and/or single sculler (depending on the juniors in Team Tufte getting to top of senior level by 2012.)
"G4S is the corner stone in my efforts towards LONDON 2012." says Olaf. "The support and partnership represents the security in my commitment to my sports career and enables me to concentrate on developing my sporting abilities. In addition G4S and I enjoy a close personal relationship, which makes the partnership even more valuable."
G4S is very proud to be associated with Olaf and looks forward to supporting him for a long time to come.
For more information, see Olaf's web site: www.olaftufte.com
Tractor tyre flipping: one of the events at the Tufte Farmers Challenge.