The United States fought through its share of disappointment and debacles at the Milan Cortina Games before a number of athletes realized their dreams and clutched gold medals with the power of destiny.
Sunday’s big finale in the men’s hockey gold-medal match played out a lot like an NHL All-Star Game, with playoff-level effort on both sides of the ice.
The United States finished the Games second behind Norway in the overall medal count with 33, 12 of them gold, for the most Winter Olympic titles at one event in the country’s history.
The Americans also claimed a dozen silver, but it was the last gold coming with an overtime 2–1 victory over Canada in the thrilling men’s hockey final that capped a sweep on ice for the U.S. side. The women had defeated Canada by the same 2–1 score, also in extra time, in their gold-medal matchup days earlier.
It was a sparkling end to the Winter Games, but the road for the Americans was at times gut-wrenching and filled with dogged determination. Norway dominated the Games in Italy, topping the medals table with a record 41—an Olympic-record 18 of them gold, with 12 silver. The Norwegians hauled in 14 cross-country medals (seven gold, two silver).
But the up-and-down United States had a strong showing overall. Part of the harsh realities of competition showed up for the Americans when Lindsey Vonn’s journey back to high-level competitive Alpine skiing ended with broken bones and fractured fairytales in the downhill. She came into the Games with a torn ACL in her left knee and left via helicopter after taking a nasty fall. She recently said the post-crash surgeries saved her leg from being amputated.
Breezy Johnson stole the show that day on the mountainside, though, taking gold in the event. And she later put skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin in position to win the gold in the combined, but Shiffrin was unable to keep the duo on the podium in the event, another that had U.S. fans shaking their heads.
Shiffrin later rebounded in the slalom, though, claiming her first Olympic medal in eight years.
Then came Friday the 13th and a nightmare performance for figure skater Ilia Malinin that neither he nor much of the sports world will ever forget. Malinin not only fell twice, he dropped from the top spot to way off the podium, in a shocking eighth-place finish that reverberated throughout the final days of the figure skating competition.
As if his free skate catastrophe, which came near the end of the first week, wasn’t enough U.S. heartache, snowboarder Chloe Kim, added to the major shocks of the first week. Kim had nothing but praise for 17-year-old South Korean Choi Gaon, who grabbed the gold from her in the halfpipe, but America’s hope for gold in the event fell to the wayside by crashing on her last run with a chance to overtake Choi.
That put speedskater Jordan Stolz front and center and he helped the Americans gain some momentum at the end of the opening week by claiming his second gold of the Games with a victory in the men’s 500 meters.
Prior to that, Elana Meyers Taylor had put together a surprise Olympic title on Feb. 16 in the monobob, along with Kaillie Humphries Armbruster, 39, getting bronze. The triumphs should also go down as a shining example of an atypical new-age family—more like a digital unit—one in which moms pursue their dreams and their families serve as the support system, traveling the world for competitions.
Meyers Taylor is a 41-year-old mother of two boys, both of whom were on hand as she celebrated after her years of an arduous path as she reached the top by being fastest to the bottom. Meyers Taylor collected her sixth career medal, tied for the most for an American woman in Winter Games history.
U.S. athletes claimed unexpected medals in cross-country skiing, including Ben Ogden finishing second with Gus Schumacher in the men’s team sprint.
Freestyle skiing medals were few and far between, and other sports garnered less hardware than expected, particularly at the short-track speedskating venue, where the United States could only muster a bronze.
The mountainsides were disastrous as Japan collected more snowboarding medals than the United States (9–2) for the first time at an Olympics, and Alex Ferreira netted the only gold for the United States in freestyle skiing.
The “Quad God” Malinin’s presence and bad experience in Week 1 perhaps served as an inspiration for Alysa Liu, the rebellious and sassy American who vaulted herself from third after the short program to grab the Olympic title.
Liu came out dressed for the part, wearing a gold-colored dress, and put on the performance of a lifetime that saved the United States from extending a gold-medal figure skating drought from 2002, when Sarah Hughes claimed the Olympic title.
Suffice to say, success is measured in different hues, but U.S. pride comes in every color.
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