Sidekicks Are Occasionally Cooler Than the Hero, as Sven-Ole Thorsen Has Aptly Demonstrated, Part 1- The Pre-Predator Years (and Denmark’s Main Empire Builder Recipe)

Preface: I realize that many of you have skewed ideas of karate due to the implementation of karate systems in US as a self defense martial art for children, but I’ll ask you to just suspend your entirely justifiable preconceptions about that fighting style until my upcoming article Fustigation Fury: Training To Fight From The Primeval To The Present- Everything You “Know” About Karate is Wrong drops. Like anything else, karate has more than its fair share of posers, charlatans, and lightweights fucking up everyone’s impression of an otherwise cool traditional style. Thus, remember that karate-kicking middleweight and light heavyweight badass Lyoto Machida is the son of Shotokan master Yoshizo Machida and regularly uses Shotokan methods in mma- it’s not the lightweight horseshit you likely think it is.

If you have ever wondered what you would get if you crossed 300+ pounds of musclebound, hairy-chested, zero-fucks-given man meat with never-say-die, USDA-certified brobot status with legendary bodybuilder, actor, and mini horse wrangler Arnold Schwarzenegger? Well, wonder know more, because the result is one of the most sexually enlightened metahumans about whom you will ever read- Sven-Ole Thorsen, a man so badass that he and his friends passed around the most dangerously unhinged party beasts of the 1980s like they were joints at the original Woodstock, all while managing to wake up in time to sort out Arnold’s personal gym and hang around on the sets of films until they wedged his gargantuan ass into frame.

Sven-Ole Thorsen (b. 1944) Vital Statistics

Faction: Martial Artist, Strongman, Powerlifter, Bodybuilder, Actor

Height: 6’4″

Weight: 300-320lbs (Peak condition); 262lbs at age 67

Titles Won: 1976 Shotokan Cup Kumite, 1983 Denmark’s Strongest Man, 1984 Denmark’s Strongest Man (Runner Up), 2006 Show of Winners Lifetime Achievement Award (for being generally awesome to his dogs and dogs in general), two Taurus World Stunt awards for his work as Tigris in Gladiator in 2001, numerous others (I am not the man’s biographer, and this is already the most comprehensive biography that has been or will be written about the man).

Best Lifts: Benched 544lbs in competition in 1981 and 533 in 1985 as a heavyweight. Routinely repped with 495+ in workouts.

Notable Film Appearances: Conan the Barbarian, Mallrats, Gladiator, Running Man, Predator, Charlie’s Angles 2: Full Throttle

One would think that the fact that Arnold’s shadow for the better part of two decades was taller and bigger than the Oak itself would have led to people asking a shitload of questions, but it seems everyone was either too zooted or otherwise fucked up to ask the man a single question about himself, which is why his biography doesn’t even seem to begin until he’s in his mid-thirties. Born in the German-occupied Kingdom of Denmark in 1944, Sven Ole-Thorsen grew up in what is now arguably the nicest place to live on planet Earth these days. In addition to having one of the highest average incomes and some of the lowest income inequality in the world, Danes are the fourth tallest people in the world, and the second happiest, which should come as no shock when you discover that they dine almost exclusively on meat of all sorts and potatoes, which I’ve established is a historical recipe for success. Literally.

With a bellyful of stegt flæsk and a headfull of postwar Danish can-do attitude, 19-year-old Sven-Ole Thorsen smashed through the wall of the nearby bodybuilding gym Club Roma like a larger version of the Kool-Aid Man and proceeded to lift all of the available weights in Copenhagen.

“Around the same time, in 1960, Club Roma opened at Danasvej 32 in Frederiksberg. It was owned by José Victor, a former Benfica football coach, and it quickly became the center of the Copenhagen bodybuilder culture. José Victor was the first to introduce the dumbbells we know today, with rotating grips that reduced the stress on the joints. He was also the first to start selling protein powder. Like many of the first pioneers, José had his own way of operating the center. As a rule, he just sat and played cards, and when customers came he shouted out in the training room if anyone could take care of this fool. One of the most prominent characters who trained at Club Roma was the then 17-year-old Sven-Ole Thorsen. It was Sweden’s cousin Vagn Thorsen, who together with Lyngby gym-founder Mogens Trane, in a garage in Slangerup, one of the most popular fitness equipment brands of the time produced ‘Scan-fit’, which still exists in many older centers. Vagn and Mogens dragged Sven down to Club Roma and guided him through a crazy workout. When Sven was totally untrained at the time, he collapsed when he had to go down the stairs from the enter and had to be carried out. He lay in bed with convulsions a week after” (Henneberg).

Nine mysterious years passed before this Danish man-mountain resurfaced in the public eye, this time as a new gym owner of the Sven-Ole Sporting Health Club, which he opened with Danish Shotokan karate legend Jorgen Bura in 1972. The two had been training partners at Club Roma for years, and after telling Bura sensei that karate was “for pussies”for years, Sven-Ole finally gave it a shot and fucking loved it. He began training twice a day, six days a week and rose rapidly in rank as the two plotted to bring Danish karate to the world stage.

If you’re as surprised as I am that La Fours from Mallrats is both a karate master and best friends with Arnold, you’re not alone. Though I was aware of the latter bit, I wrongly assumed that Thorsen was merely a gigantic meathead who was at the right place at the right time. That is hardly the case, as Sven-Ole Thorsen was one of the real driving factors behind the popularization of karate in Europe, which then led to the explosion of hardass karate fighters who tore ass out of Europe to titillate fight fans around the world,

“Bura sensei told me that it would be good for me to train karate, but I replied that it was for pussies. Later, I then found out that it was definitely not for pussies. It is really men who practice karate.”

He was bitten so badly by the karate bug that and his business partner imported one of the most prestigious Shotokan sensei of the time, Masahiko Tanaka (b. 1941) to Denmark to legitimize European Shotokan. This was no minor thing, either- Bura and Thorsen footed the expenses for Tanaka’s travel expenses as well as his living expenses and rent for the entire time he was in Denmark. And that gamble paid fucking dividends, because Tanaka became Denmark’s national coach and won back-to-back world kumite titles while living there. That then “caused Denmark to come on the world map and Denmark was perceived as one of the few countries outside Japan that had samurai discipline” (Anderson).

“At first I was laughed at. I started late with karate. Was over 30 years and weighed more than 140 kilos. It made me stubborn that they laughed at me. Later, my technique got better and I could participate on par with the other black belts, and later I could also win over them in kumite.”

At this point, people looked the other way when a 300 pound man-mountain wedged himself into sparring with the brown and black belts, due in large part to the fact that he was treated as what amounted to a walking heavy bag.

“I was only wearing a purple belt back then, but was allowed to train with the brown and black belts. I was used just like a heavy bag. [Tanaka] liked to kick and hit me. I prayed for that. When he trained with me, he wanted me to catch or stop him, but it was impossible. He was far too fast, even though he was a tall Japanese. He was really an inspiration and an amazing instructor. He always went for the lead and demonstrated the exercises. He went harder than the rest of us during the workouts.”

“It was tough. Many got teeth knocked loose, bloody noses, sore nuts and broken ribs. It was part of the training. You seriously couldn’t wait- it was a pleasure to go to the dojo and get a bloody nose from Tanaka sensei” (Andersen).

If you imagine the training scenes from 36 Chambers of Shaolin, only set amongst the rolling green hills of Denmark, where cheese flows like wine and hotties in dirndls and lederhosen serve beer and sausages. In this land of towering, burly, blonde, (and in the case of the broads, buxom) Danes, two tiny Japanese masters beat the everloving dogshit out of their students and co-instructors in multiple summer camps designed by Spartan warriors who roam the Earth in undead displeasure devising training programs for towheaded aspiring martial artists.

“There we were awakened at 4 in the morning. Half nights, half asleep and half full, we had to make kihon and kata. Our summer camp was at the jogging track in Rønne. Each morning there were 10 to 12 rounds on the track with oi-zuki and mae geri. One of the few that remained was myself. People dropped off along the way. It was really good and tough training” (Andersen).

And it was even worse for the instructors, who were constantly killing themselves in an effort to outdo each other while doing everything twice as fast, hard, and perfectly as the students. Instead of just sparring, they sparred with people on their backs. Instead of running, they ran with a partner tied to their backs, bent double to balance the weight.. And lo and behold, hard training again trumped “scientific training” and those camps produced champion after champion, not the least of which was Sven himself, who competed with an honorary black belt on his way to trashing everyone in the 1976 Shotokan Cup. And when I say trashed everyone, I mean everyone, including people from his very own dojo and training camps, like Peter Munk (who Sven-Ole stated was the toughest opponent he ever faced).

“The best thing I can say to illustrate it was the Shotokan Cup in 1976 for brown belts oi Bornholm, where I met Peter Munk, who was Bornholmer. He was one of the best technicians we had, and in the fight we kicked the mae geri at the same time and because I was 40-50 kilos heavier his leg broke. I felt guilty and that I was not the real winner because he couldn’t continue the fight. So I went to the hospital and wanted to give him my trophy because I didn’t think I was the real winner. But he gave it back to me and said I was the winner. There was a lot of honor in behaving the right way.

The trophy is hanging on my wall here. It is a Japanese dragon cut from a piece of teak. Tanaka sensei has cut it with a small pocket knife. “

“Back then, we competed with Kyokushinkai karate, which was led by Jørgen Albrechtsen [also a student of Jorgen Bura, pictured left with his blazing hot wife Jeanita Lionett]. We advertised with the world champion in karate, Tanaka sensei, teaching our dojo after which Albrechtsen began to advertise that he had the world champion, Katsuaki Sato. An ad war broke out where we had to outdo each other.

So at one point, I was a brown belt at that time and I persuaded some of the black belts to visit Jørgen Albrechtsen [who was taught by Oyama himself]. We went to his studio on Ørnevej to challenge him. We walked into the training room where there were over 100 karate students being taught. I said I wanted to challenge Jørgen Albrechtsen. He came out of an office, but walked in again when he saw us, locked the door and called the police” (Andersen).

Sufficed to say that while you might think Sven-Ole’s claim to fame is as Thorgrim in Conan, he considers himself to be a karateka first and foremost. Thus, when he found time to get away from the karate wars in which he occasionally found himself embroiled, Sven-Ole was well known for being one of the most jacked motherfuckers walking around Europe at the time. Though it’s unclear if he ever competed in the sport, Thorsen worked tirelessly to build a strong bodybuilding community in Denmark. Before founding the Danish Bodybuilding Federation in 1979, Thorsen personally funded a screening of Pumping Iron in Copenhagen that was attended by the Oak himself.

“I had opened my gym, Sporting Health Club, in 1972 and we had seminars with Frank Zane, Mike Menzer, Kalman Szkalak amongst others. Then in 1978, when Arnold was promoting “Pumping Iron”, a local cinema contacted me and wanted to to a deal with the gym abouting inviting Arnold to the danish premier in Copenhagen. Unfortunately the cinema pulled out, as it was too expensive for them, but then I decided to finance Arnold’s visit myself. We introduced “Pumping Iron” and bodybuilding to Denmark and had a great time doing so.

Later that year when I was in Long Beach for a martial arts competition, I called Arnold and he was going to visit John Milius, who at the time was writing the script for Conan the Barbarian…. He said to me, ‘I have to go and see a director who wants to do a movie called Conan The Barbarian. I want you to come with me.’

We went and when [director] John Milius saw me, he was really impressed by my size and that I came from Denmark. He saw me as some kind of Viking! He was writing the screenplay at the time and said, ‘I need a good strong name. Give me a good strong name for a character in this picture.’ I said, ‘What about Thorgrim?’ He loved the name and six months later he called me and said, ‘Hey, Sven. I want you to play Thorgrim in Spain. Get your biggest friends. We’re going to put you all in Conan the Barbarian.’

So, I picked ten big friends, all weightlifters, and we went down to Spain. We were called The Animals! There were ten big guys from Denmark, ten American stuntmen and ten Spanish stuntmen – thirty guys, so of course there was a lot of competition between us and John ended up using us for most of the stunts in Conan the Barbarian” (Find).

Conan was filmed in 1981, which was an interesting transitory period for Sven-Ole, who at that point was just a jacked karate fighter. He’d started the Danish Bodybuilding Federation in 1979 after throwing Tanaka into some of the hardest weight training he’d put anyone through and helped him net two world kumite titles. His gym was one of the best known bodybuilding meccas in Europe, and Thorsen was beginning to become a minor celebrity. His time on set in Conan, however, cemented him as a Hollywood fixture for over a decade to follow.

Lest you worry you’ll be left in the dark in regards to the food that turned Danes into the gorgeous, musclebound behemoths who conquered Northern Europe and currently tower over just about everyone but the Latvians, Brendan “Stony” Fraser’s relatives, and the Dutch, fear not. Here is the national dish of Denmark, which you’ll be unsurprised to discover is meat and potatoes, although the meat is not beef or chicken- it’s pork. As it happens, the Danes are the most pork eating people in the world, consuming about 80% of their bodyweight in delicious porcine products every year (70kg per person, and the weight of an average male is 86kg). Whether or not you love pork, that is certainly some delicious food for thought.

The following recipe comes from this source, and I’ve not yet tried it, so I have made no changes to the original, but it is typically served with a good high gravity beer. If you’re curious, “æ” is a letter from the Latin alphabet called “ash” and it sounds like the “ah” sound in “that.”

Stegt Flæsk med Persillesovs

Danish Fried Pork Belly and Parsley Sauce

The Danish National Dish ”Stegt Flæsk med persillesovs” – or Fried Pork Belly with parsley sauce – is a genuine old rural dish that is orientated from the rustic Danish country kitchen from around the middle of the 1700s. Frying pork belly slices has been known since the Stone Age about 3-400 B.C. – and just as long – as peasants and hunters living in the Stone Age – have had pigs as their livestock. In the beginning of the 1800s the rural country kitchen added potatoes and white sauce and parsley to the fried pork belly slices – and the dish became one of the Danes most favourite and popular meals – and since a real classic dish – which also is quite inexpensive and affordable even for the poorest households. When the recipe hit the city kitchens and restaurants – it became a real classic and traditional dish – and was also counted as a part of the exquisite Danish cuisine that chefs prepared and cooked in different variations. The ”Stegt Flæsk med persillesovs” is a must to eat once a week dish – and especially during the cold winter season – even though the juicy porky dish can be eaten all year round. In the summertime the Danes have a regular outdoor feast grilling or barbecuing their pork belly slices. The ”Stegt Flæsk med persillesovs” dish is Denmark’s national dish.

Ingredients

• 1/4 teaspoon
• 1000 g Pork belly in slices (unsalted)
• 1 kg Potatoes (new)
• 50 g Danish Butter
• 4 tablespoons Wheat flour (I’d use white flour, as wheat flour makes gritty, shitty gravy, but it’s up to you)
• 4 dl Milk 3,5% (I’ve no idea what the conversion for a deciliter is, nor have I ever seen 3.5% milk, so figure it out with whole or 2%)
• 1 dl Whipping Cream (a deciliter is .42 cups, which is 3.3oz. I couldn’t stand not knowing.)
• 1-2 dl Chopped fresh parsley Salt (according to taste)
• Pepper (according to taste) Nutmeg – if preferred

Directions

1. Cut the pork belly in 5-6 mm thick slices – then dry the slices on kitchen roll towel for a while. Season the slices with salt and pepper before frying. Potatoes and Parsley
2. Start peeling the potatoes. Put them in a pot – and cover them with cold water. Boil the potatoes for 15-20 minutes. You can leave the skin on – if you prefer. Especially “new” potatoes of the season with very thin tender – white skin. Chop the parsley into pieces.Some parsley for the sauce and some for decoration. The Parsley Sauce
3. Make a butter ball of butter and flour and stir continuously – while melting in the sauce pot – and until the mixture is turned into a consistent mass. Ad little milk and stir. Repeat until the sauce has the consistency that you favour. Not to thick and not to light. Do not boil the sauce. You will end up having prepared a kind of white “béchamel sauce”. Add the whipping cream and taste the sauce. Put nutmeg in – if preferred. Then add all the chopped parsley – and season to taste with salt and pepper – while stirring. Let the sauce simmer for 5-10 minutes – so the ingredients are stirred and mixed together – while sucking up flavour. Fry the pork belly
4. Fry the pork belly slices for almost 2 minutes on each side on a hot pan with moderate heat until they seam crispy and with a golden surface. Dry them again on kitchen roll towel – where some of the fat can drain – and keep the fried pork belly slices warm in an oven until serving, or put the pork belly in a preheated 200° C / 400° Foven and fry for 20 minutes – while turning the slices after half the roasting time. In the summertime it is quicker to grill the pork belly slices on a well heated charcoal grill.
5. Put the lukewarm potatoes on a warm plate – arrange the fried pork belly strips – then pour the warm temperate parsley sauce over the potatoes. Sprinkle some fresh chopped parsley over the dish – and serve.

Sources:

Andersen, Jesper Fjeldgaard. Sven-Ole Thorsen: Karateka for life. Karate History. 16 Feb 2012. Web. 6 Apr 2020. https://karatehistorie.dk/interviews/sven-ole-thorsen/

Bura Sensei: Chief instructor of JKA Denmark.  JKA Denmark.  Web.  6 Apr 2020.  http://www.jka.dk/bura_sensei_in_english.htm

Find, Thomas. Bringing down the hammer with Sven-Ole Thorsen. The Arnold Fans. 10 May 2018. Web. 5 Apr 2020. http://www.thearnoldfans.com/news/2018/5/10/bringing-down-the-hammer-with-sven-ole-thorsen.html

Henneberg, Brian.  The Danish fitness history – part 3 mussetruss.  26 May 2013.  Web.  8 Apr 2020.  https://www.bodybuilding.dk/apropos.php?page=77

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