United States underwhelming at the Olympics

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Cason Zehntner, Staff Reporter

Another day, another Winter Olympics that has passed. However, if you came from a little known country called the United States, the Winter Olympics seemed to be a bleak existence where nothing got accomplished. This year has had the lowest medal haul for America (getting only 23 medals) since the 1998 Nagano Olympic Games.

It might be easy to say that the Winter Olympics have never been the strong suit of America. The only time they had ever ranked number one on the medal table was during the Lake Placid Olympics… back in 1932. And the last time we ever had overall medal count was back in 2010.

One of the main problems that the United States faced was overall just superior better teams. While the United States is far from the worst team at the Olympics, it is dragged down by countries that live in actual winter climates that are well adapted for the Winter Olympics.

The United States has also grown into a position of comfort, almost always expecting to win. Other problems are the American athletes just barely missing making it into the rankings, with about 37 athletes placing fourth or fifth, such as Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, or just sheer unexpected weather that plagued the Olympics.

Another problem that faced the Olympics was not even due to the activities themselves. The overall sheer enthusiasm of the American populous was dimmed by the low turnout of medals by the American athletes. There was even a week-like period in February 15-21 where no gold medals were won by the athletes. This is what likely caused the massive ratings drop from this year, which had the Opening Ceremony down by eight percent and just down 24 percent in general for the 18-49 demographic.

While it may have been an overall embarrassment of an Olympics had it not been for the sudden resurgence of the athletes skill during the final days of the Olympics, such as the unexpected win of the women’s hockey team against Canada or the winning of a gold medal by the men’s curling team, it could still be considered a disappointment for those who watched. This is further shown when the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) had expected the U.S. to win up to 37 medals, with a baseline of 25. While it may have been a rather sad turn, there is always next time, four years from now.