U.S.A places fourth in Olympic medal count

Justin Atkinson, Sports Editor

The US Winter Olympic team finished fourth in the medal count after starting slow to start off the Olympics. Fourth place is actually where most athletes from the US placed in their events. According to ESPN.com, the US ended with nine gold medals, eight silver, and six bronze. They only had 11 medals going into the last week of the Olympics. They had 23 medals by the end of the Olympics, including a gold in women’s hockey against Canada and a gold in men’s curling.

The fourth spot is not where the US wanted to be, they were expected to be at least in the top two in the medal count. With all the commercials and advertisements for the olympics everywhere, people expected the US to dominate these Olympic games. The US started very slow, they just had a hard time winning events. They were consistent in their placing in every event . They just could not seem to compete with countries like Norway and Germany at the start of the games.

Norway’s national team had the most medals with 39. They had fourteen gold and silver medals with eleven bronze medals. Germany came in second with 31 total medals and Canada came in third with 29 medals. Norway took a medal in every ski event and they had seven golds just in the cross-country skiing events. Norway is known for being talented at the Winter Olympics, they have 368 total medals in the Winter Olympics.

The US saw four of its golds in snowboarding events like the halfpipe and the slopestyle. We saw two of the youngest Olympic gold medal winners of all time, Red Gerard and Chloe Kim, who are both 17. The two young winners showed great talent and skill and will be very tough competitors for the next couple Olympic games.

Another highlight from the games was professional snowboarder  Shaun White, coming back from a big injury while training for this year’s Olympics. White hurt himself while practicing, he lost control and hit his face on the edge of the superpipe and got 62 stitches. Despite all this, White still managed to qualify for the US Olympic team and ultimately won his third gold medal of his amazing Olympic career.

The US may have started the Olympics a little rocky, but they managed to find their footing towards the end. At one point, the US was on pace to only win 12 medals, but they were able to make a comeback thanks to some amazing wins in big events. The women’s US hockey team had a miraculous game against Canada in the finals. The US were down going into the third period, but they were able to score a goal and tie the game with seven minutes left in the period by Monique Lamoureux-Morando. The score was 3-3 going into the overtime, neither team would score pushing the game into a shootout. Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson, sister of Lamoureux-Morando who tied the game, scored the winning goal in the shootout. This win against the four-time defending Olympic champion signaled a surge in competitiveness in the hearts of the US athletes.

The US team may not have had the Olympic games everyone expected, but they still did pretty good and even shocked some people in the process with some big wins. No one expected the US to beat Sweden in the final of the men’s curling, but it happened. Even Lindsey Vonn, a world cup downhill ski champion, came back to the Olympics after missing the games due to injury. Vonn has had been affected by injuries in the past and even injured her humerus in 2016 that needed surgery. Vonn was able to come back from all of that and win a bronze medal in the women’s downhill ski event.

The US team got behind stories like that made a surge towards the top of the medal count. The US team went from not expecting to win more than 12 medals a week into the games to placing fourth in the medal count. This accomplishment is pretty amazing and shows the hearts of the US athletes.