OlympicsFan

Overall a better than expected result for Germany, although some sports (mainly snowboard and ski jumping) still underperformed. Cross-country skiing and skeleton were probably the biggest overperformers. I think this is pretty much the ceiling for Germany for now and it is almost incredible for Germany to be doing this good while being pretty much nonexistant in the sports with the most medals (alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, biathlon, short track, speed skating, freestyle skiing, snowboard)*. There is some hope in some of those sports (as always), but i don't expect the german medal tally in those sports to be much better in 4 years so the german success probably will again mainly depend on the material in sliding events. Some medal statistics: Number of different sports countries medalled in: Russia: 10 Canada/Norway/Germany: 9 Italy/USA: 8 Japan: 7 France/Austria/Sweden/China: 6 Number of different sports countries won a gold medal in: Norway/Germany/Sweden: 6 USA/China: 5 Canada: 4 Austria/France/Japan: 3 Russia/Netherlands/Switzerland/Italy/Finland/New Zealand: 2 Athletes with the most golds: J. Boe 4 Bolshunov/Roeiseland/Schouten/Johaug 3 (17 athletes had 2 golds) Athletes with the most medals: J. Boe/Bolshunov/Roeiseland/Fillon Maillet 5 Schouten/T. Boe/Klaebo/Schulting/Takagi 4 Johaug/Latypov/Dahlqvist/Shaogang Liu/Weidemann/Sundling/I. Niskanen/Nepryaeva/Eckhoff/Dubois/E. Öberg/Fontana/Minjeong Choi/Strolz/Gu/Grabaak Interesting that: a) Two dutch athletes won 4 medals while no german/american/swiss athlete won more than 2 medals b) An athlete from Hungary won more medals than the most successful german/american athlete Edit*: I just looked at the distribution of german (gold) medals: Number of medal events in alpine skiing + biathlon + cross-country skiing + freestyle skiing + short track + snowboard + speed skating: 81 Number of german (gold) medals in those events: 6 (2) Number of medals events in all other sports: 27 Number of german (gold) medals in those events: 21 (10)

1) Not sure why this sport needs saving. Would be way more sensible to get rid of it (or only give olympics to countries with existing tracks). 2) We saw in 2014 that it isn't impossible for FES (german institute that develops the bobs) to produce a shitty bob and if that happens again german athletes will have a very hard time to even win a medal.

You were talking about "the germans", so how was anyone supposed to read this as "not Friedrich"? If you were talking about Hafer: He had a different bob. People who watched the race must have realized that he constantly lost time in the last part of the race even without hitting any walls and even in comparison to Kripps.

Nice of Germany to not sweep another podium and gift Canada a medal. Kripps should probably hand his medal over to the german officials who decided to give Hafer an older bob. Too bad that Germany had clearly inferior material in 2014, otherwise Friedrich might have gone for 8 golds.

Crazy how delusional you are ... Friedrich always has been considered a generational talent, he could probably beat a grandpa like Kripps racing in a salad bowl. It was the same after womens monobob when canadian fans thought that Humphries could seriously win gold in womens 2-man.

Also part of the gold belongs to New Zealand (one of the scottish players was born there).

I think you can have 4 DNF and still win.

A bit of a mess up by IOC to first tell everyone that only athletes who actually raced will get medals, just to go back on that shortly before the race (according to german TV). Germany didn't want to take any chances, so they used their replacement (Rauchfuss) instead of Strasser in the final.

Happy that Dürr and Straßer won a medal after all, but sad that Aicher will also get a medal. A bit tragic that Dürr again missed gold by 0.19 seconds as she already did in the slalom. Perfect end to the olympics for Austria, they simply couldn't do no wrong here. One of their best ever olympics with such a mediocre team (especially on the women's side) shows how incredibly lucky they were here. They easily won 6 or 7 more medals than they deserved.

Yes, this is why FIS should change the rules. Only have one man and one woman per nation and have all athletes race on both courses. Would also help nations like Slovenia or Sweden who don't quite have the depth.

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I am happy that Germany made the semifinal, but if Switzerland would have competed with their best team they probably would have won. On paper it should be gold for Austria, silver for USA and bronze for Germany. Too bad that Dürr will race against Shiffrin, would have been better for her to face Moltzan.

Hopefully. I think Russia will set a record for their most medals ever. Clearly they have no intention to stop their doping program. The best would be to just exclude all athletes who are stationed in Russia.

Pretty interesting to look at the number of different sports nations won medals in. The following nations won medals in 3 different sports: Australia Slovenia Netherlands ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Switzerland (and without Scherrer's bronze in men's snowboard halfpipe, they only would have won medals in 2 different sports) Also here is the list of nations that have won medals in more different sports than Italy: Norway, Russia, Canada

I asked myself that question yesterday (kind of*). I think even if it would be possible to do on purpose, noone in gold medal position would risk "only" winning silver by messing up. * I asked myself if theoretically it would still be possible for Germany to win the medal table by winning multiple golds in the same event and then i asked myself in which sports/events it would be the easiest to tie for gold on purpose.

Women's team pursuit: No, at least Japan was a bigger favorite. Kingsbury: 1 billion percent he wasn't the biggest favorite. Maybe/probably the favorite, but he didn't even win the last world cup before the olympics. Snowboard slopestyle: I think there were many gold medal contenders (McMorris, Parrot, Toutant, Su Yiming, Gerard, Kleveland), but overall a canadian gold probably seemed most likely. Canadian men were probably/possibly favorite in snowboard slopestyle and moguls, but certainly not overwhelming favorites. Canada might have been expected to win 1 or 2 more golds, but i am not sure if it was reasonable to expect more medals overall. Canada won tons of surprising medals.

Yes, but the logical conclusion should be to shorten the games. I think a more compact TV schedule would be appreciated by most (casual) TV viewers. There are clearly less winter sports and clearly less people who practice winter sports. It would be only logical for the duration of the games to reflect that. Obviously IOC would claim that less airtime would mean less money (which it probably would), but since the athletes get pretty much jack shit anyways, it would only hurt people who don't do anything to help the sport anyways.

I am all for it, but only if they do the same in all other sports where the material is decisive (track cycling, cross-country skiing, biathlon, ski jumping, speed skating and so on).

So also no natural track luge, ski mountaineering, mixed curling, short track mixed relay or speed skating mass start?

Biathlon probably, but certainly not cross-country skiing. There are like 5 people who regularly practice speed skating, but 10 billion people who regularly practice alpine skiing/cross-country skiing. The number of medal events should reflect that (at least to some degree). No clue why inline skating isn't even an olympic sport while speed skating has a billion medal events.

You are only talking about golds? There are a lot of minor medals that Canada shouldn't have won and i am not sure if Canada was actually the favorite in men's snowboard slopestyle (a gold they shouldn't have won) and speed skating women's team pursuit. I guess the reality is that Canada just doesn't have many gold medal favorites. Not sure if Canada has any (clear) gold medal favorite in an individual event.

Speed skating already has way too many events, if anything the number of events should be reduced.

No, objectively Germany would deserve it the most. No other nation had more 4th places here.

Still it is infinitely more deserving to be part of the olympic program than a nonsense event like mixed curling. At least it isn't the same as the other events just with one man and one woman. Also i think than most people would rather watch the team event than the combined.

Pretty crazy that the 3 same nations won the medals in all women's biathlon/cross-country team events and that Norway wasn't one of those nations: Cross-country skiing relay: Russia - Germany - Sweden Cross-country skiing team sprint: Germany - Sweden - Russia Biathlon relay: Sweden - Russia - Germany All those nations have the exact same medal tally. Who would have thought that Germany would win 3 more medals than Norway in those events? Edit: Also pretty surprising that 3 female cross-country skiers (Sundling, Dahlqvist, Nepryayeva) will end the games with at least as many medals as Johaug. If Johaug doesn't win a medal in her last race (unlikely), she will end the olympics with the same number of medals as Victoria Carl and Katharina Hennig.