Sochi games - Final thoughts

The Sochi games are complete and I wanted to share some of my opinions of the games. Overall the medal count wasn't too bad for the USA. Russia won 4 medals on the games last day to stretch their medal lead over the USA from 2 to 5. Russia was first with 33 total medals and the USA was second with 28 total medals.

The USA did very well at snowboarding and slopestyle events winning 9 medals. Jamie Anderson won gold in women's slopestyle and Sage Kotsenberg won gold in men's slopestyle. Devin Logan won silver in women's slopestyle skiing, which is different than slopestyle where they use boards. Kaitlyn Farrington won gold and Kelly Clark won silver in women's halfpipe. In men's ski slopestyle the USA men swept the podium. Joss Christensen won gold, Gus Kenworthy won silver and Nick Goepper won bronze. Alex Deibold won bronze in men's snowboard cross.

Figure Skating was a mixed result as Meryl Davis/Charlie White win gold in Ice Dance over Virtue/Moir of Canada. Gracie Gold finished 4th after the short program and free skate to Russian gold medal winner Adelina Sotnikova. The controversy is she was seen hugging a Russian judge afterwards. Yuna Kim of Korea, who won gold in Vancouver had to settle for silver. Although it was explained that Sotnikova had a tougher program in the free skate than Kim, Sotnikova made a few minor mistakes on jumps while Kim did not make any. A petition was started at change.org and had well over a million people on it complaining of unfair, biased judging. Also Ashley Wagner and Polina Edmunds were steady but not spectacular, hence the 7th and 9th place performances. On the men's side, Jason Brown and Jeremy Abbott were good but also not spectacular, hence their 9th and 12th place finishes. The USA did win a team bronze medal, however. Meryl Davis and Charlie White were spectacular as were their Canadian rivals Virtue and Moir.

The USA did well in skiing as well with Ted Ligety winning gold in men's Giant Slalom and Mikaela Shiffrin winning gold in women's slalom. Julia Mancuso winning bronze in women's Super Combined Slalom and Bode Miller and Andrew Weibrecht winning bronze and silver, respectively in men's Super G.

It was a bit disappointing to see the USA lose 3 times to the Canadians in the games final days. Two were medals. Canada beat the USA in both men's and women's hockey and in women's 2 man bobsled. The high point of USA hockey was the USA men's team beat Russia 3-2 in a shootout. Russia thought they scored the game winning goal but it was not allowed because the goal was moved. After a scoreless overtime, T.J. Oshie scored on 4 of 6 shots in the shootout to win it for the USA.
A bit disappointing was that the USA women's team had a 2 goal lead on Canada and then Canada came back to beat the USA 3-2 in OT. to win gold. The USA had to settle for silver. The USA men's team lost to Finland 5-0 and finished 4th.

The USA won only one medal in speedskating while the Netherlands won over 20 speedskating medals. The USA won silver in the 5000M men's relay. J.R. Celski and Shani Davis mostly came away with no medals(Celski won 1 silver). There was a flap about the uniforms which were made by UnderArmour. The USA changed uniforms from the newer uniforms with an air vent to their older uniforms but it did not make much difference. I'd say it was mostly the athletes themselves than the uniforms which were also being furnished to the bobsledders, who did medal. Viktor Ahn, formerly of South Korea, now of Russia won several speedskating medals to tie Apolo Ohno at 8 speedskating medals a piece. A bit disappointing at the track.

As far as predictions go, I had predicted 38 total medals and 12 gold, 14 silver and 12 bronze. I did get 12 bronze correctly. The USA had a shot at 12 gold with 3 days left and did not win any gold since. The USA has never won more than 10 gold in a Winter Olympics(2002 Salt Lake City). The USA has received 9 gold in each of the last 2 winter games. 38 total medals was out of reach by Day 5. I did not predict Russia coming in first in the total medal count. I predicted the USA would finish first in the total medal count, which did not happen(they finished second).
The Netherlands, Norway and Canada had great Olympics while Germany slipped a bit. This was Russia's Olympics in more ways than one.

NBC's coverage improved some over 2012 London. NBC's coverage of the Opening Ceremony was much less edited than the closing ceremony. While Bob Costas was out with pinkeye for a week Matt Lauer and Merideth Viera filled in nicely. NBC did show live events on The NBC Sports network and NBC showed live weekend events but taped figure skating for prime time. The last day of the games NBC showed a documentary of the 20th anniversary of the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan debacle which lasted for weeks. This was quite relevant and interesting because I had forgot some of the details of how it all went down. NBC did cut the closing ceremony to air a new show. The closing ceremony was heavily edited and came across as incomplete. Overall, NBC did a bit better job with their coverage at the Sochi games.