We picked up two more medals in the last couple days, but the Winter Olympics are now officially over. Our men’s curling team won Gold over the weekend, and U.S. snowboarder Kyle Mack took Silver in men’s big air.
The Gold medal curling match was pretty exciting . . . for curling anyway. The U.S. and Sweden were tied until we scored FIVE points in a single round near the end. That means 5 of our 8 stones stayed on the target and counted, and none of theirs did.
Sweden was the top-ranked team going in, and the U.S. was NOT expected to win. So it was a big upset.
(Check out the video of the five-point shot.)
Here are five sets of stats and facts to wrap up the 2018 Winter Olympics . . .
1. Norway won the most medals this time with 39, followed by Germany with 31 . . . Canada with 29 . . . the U.S. with just 23 . . . and the Netherlands in fifth with 20.
Back in 2014, we won 28 medals. And we won 37 in 2010, which WAS the record at the time.
Now Norway holds the new record with 39.
2. In the end, we won 9 Gold medals, 8 Silver, and 6 Bronze. Our best sport was snowboarding where we won 7, including 4 Gold. We also won 4 medals in freestyle skiing . . . 3 in Alpine . . . and 1 in cross-country. So if you lump those together, then SKIING was our best sport with 8 medals. But only 3 were Gold.
We also took Gold in women’s hockey . . . a Gold in curling . . . Silvers in bobsled, luge, and short track . . . a Bronze in speedskating . . . and 2 Bronze medals in figure skating.
3. The U.S. women did slightly better than the men this year, winning 12 of our 23 medals, including 5 Gold. The men won 9 medals, including 4 Gold. We also won two Bronze medals in pairs figure skating, which had both men and women.
4. Our individual standouts this year were snowboarder Jamie Anderson and skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who each won a Gold and a Silver. Brother-and-sister figure skaters Alex and Maia Shibutani also won those two Bronze medals.
5. Only TWO world records were broken this year, both in speedskating. Another 23 Olympic records also fell, 17 of them in speedskating. The other six were in figure skating. None of those were by Americans.
But we did set a few OTHER records . . .
Women’s hockey player Jocelyne Lamoureux scored two goals in six seconds . . . 33-year-old Lindsey Vonn became the oldest woman to ever medal in Alpine skiing . . . and 17-year-old snowboarders Chloe Kim and Red Gerard became the firstathletes to be born in the 21st century and win a Gold medal.
And finally, the youngest athlete to compete was a 15-year-old skier from China. The oldest was a 49-year-old curler from Finland. OUR youngest and oldest were 17-year-old figure skater Vincent Zhou, and 39-year-old hockey player Brian Gionta.