#and he wouldve been very upset at the outcome

[itzmellooo]

I said I was going on hiatus but I'm a liar actually

[writingguide003-blog]

Team USA's Winter Olympics highlights and lowlights: our writers' verdicts

New Post has been published on https://writingguideto.com/must-see/team-usas-winter-olympics-highlights-and-lowlights-our-writers-verdicts/

Team USA's Winter Olympics highlights and lowlights: our writers' verdicts

From Chloe Kims gold to Elizabeth Swaneys slouch towards glory, Guardian writers on the big stories from Pyeongchang

Best US performance at the Olympics

No American woman had ever won an Olympic medal in cross country until Jessie Diggins overtook Sweden and Norway on the final lap to win the team sprint freestyle alongside Kikkan Randall. The bubbly 26-year-old from Minnesota, who spends her downtime learning hip-hop dance routines from YouTube tutorials, suffered near-miss after near-miss early on in Pyeongchang when she finished in the top six but off the podium in her first four events, missing bronze by 3.3 seconds in the 10km freestyle. Nevertheless, she persisted. For her efforts and ebullience Diggins was chosen to carry the flag into the closing ceremony by her USA team-mates. BAG

John Shusters name was synonymous with failure on the biggest stage. It was always unfair. He had a good record in World Championship competition, and if anyone in the USA couldve outperformed him, he wouldnt have been in the Olympics. Americans have short attention spans, and we only notice the Olympics, where he has twice flopped as a skip. After a 2-4 start in Pyeongchang, every game was a must-win. He reeled off a long succession of clutch shots over the course of several days. A 4-5 record wouldve been fine. He, and his team, won gold. BD

The womens hockey teams win over Canada was the most exciting moment for the American delegation. It had been 20 years since the team had won gold, forever frustrated by the mighty Canadian team. And while this group seemed to have a better chance at gold going into these Games, the thought of actually beating Canada in the final sounded too daunting to imagine. Then they did and in one of the greatest Olympic hockey games too. LC

Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson. Hockey may be the ultimate team sport, but Lamoureux-Davidsons individual effort on her shootout goal to help finally push the US past Canada set her apart. A day after the US win, I was at a hockey rink and saw a group of young boys trying and failing to replicate the female stars puck wizardry. The US will likely have to go through Canada again in four years, but Lamoureux-Davidsons goal in Pyeongchang will live on forever. DG

Biggest US disappointment

Madison Hubell and Zachary Donohue encapsulate the feelings of many US skaters in Pyeongchang. Photograph: Jean Catuffe/Getty Images

None of the US womens figure skating contingent Bradie Tennell (who finished ninth), Mirai Nagasu (10th) and Karen Chen (11th) skated cleanly in any of their six programs in the singles competition, where an American woman failed to finish in the top six for the first time at any Olympics since World War II. As Alina Zagitova became the second-youngest Olympic gold medalist in figure skating history after Tara Lipinski, the heady days of American dominance embodied by Lipinski, Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen and Sarah Hughes never felt more distant. (And that was before the normally whip-smart Nagasus bizarre post-competition remarks, which shes been walking back since.) BAG

The disappointment was spread almost evenly, from speedskating to biathlon, but the biggest had to be figure skating. They were just good enough in the team event, and Mirai Nagasu in particular was exceptional. But after that, too many things went wrong. The highlights were Nathan Chens free skate and the Shibutanis free dance, along with beautiful but not highly scored skates from Adam Rippon. The lowlights: all three women had major issues with their individual performances, two of the ice dance duos faltered in the free skate, and Chen dug too deep a hole for himself in the short program. BD

Figure skating overshadows everything else at the Winter Olympics and the US traditionally does well in this sport. At least until this year. While there were a few bright spots for the American team Nathan Chens comeback and team and ice dancing bronzes the overall performance was poor, especially for the US women who have often been the countrys biggest Olympic stars. Pyeongchang showed how far American figure skating has fallen behind the rest of the world. LC

Things quickly fell apart for US figure skating after getting bronze in the team event and no number of Adam Rippon interviews could save it. The question for US figure skating is, considering the intense training required by very young athletes to excel in the sport, is it worth whats required to get back to the medal stand in 2022? DG

Star of the Games

Marit Bjoergen displayed her brilliance in Pyeongchang. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

The only correct answer is Ester Ledeck, the winter sports polymath from the Czech Republic whose golds in alpine skiings super-G (in one of the biggest Olympic upsets ever) and snowboardings parallel giant slalom (as the prohibitive favorite) gave her an unprecedented ski-snowboarding double and made her only the third athlete ever to win individual Winter Games medals in different sports and the first in 86 years. Greatest athlete on the planet? The 22-year-old is no doubt in the discussion. BAG

Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjoergen already had 10 Olympic medals from four Olympics. Thats a remarkable career, but it wasnt enough for her. At age 37, she took five more, finishing her Olympic career with a rout of nearly two minutes in the 30km classical. She is the Michael Phelps of the Winter Games, holding the career record with 15 medals. BD

While Norway dominated the Olympics and should be celebrated as the star of the Games, we must pay tribute to the US mens curling team. The memory of five unathletic men with brooms in their hands will be burned in many minds for years to come. America is about to have its curling craze. A sport that has brought giggles for years will now spawn news clubs and a new generation of young American curlers looking for their own Olympic glory without having to lift a weight. LC

Chloe Kims father emigrated to the United States. And the 17-year old snowboarding superstar loves breakfast sandwiches so much she tweeted about them in the middle of her work day. Tens of millions of Americans can relate to at least one, if not both of those experiences. What we cant relate to is her ability to fly in the half pipe. But her talent, youth and personality means she will be the biggest name in US winter sports heading to 2022. DG

Villain of the Games

Elizabeth Swaney wends her way towards a very average performance. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

My personal villain was Soohorang. (Dont even get me started.) But a more universal choice would have to be the weather, which made a mockery of organizers attempts to schedule the alpine skiing competition by squeezing it on both ends of the calendar. As a result Mikaela Shiffrins much-hyped bid for history in five events was truncated to three. Her results in those races speak for themselves first in the giant slalom, fourth in the slalom and second in the alpine combined and by no sane metric could Shiffrins Olympics be considered a disappointment, even if the fourth-place finish did come in the discipline shes dominated since Sochi. But there will always persist a sense of what if surrounding Shiffrins fortnight in the Taebaek mountains. Who knows what records might have fallen had only the weather complied? BAG

Italian biathlete Dominik Windisch surely couldnt believe his luck in the mixed relay when Germanys Arnd Peiffer missed four shots, leaving the door open for Italy to take a medal. Windisch and Peiffer battled for the third spot all through the last lap. Windisch had a slight edge heading into the finishing straight, where lanes are marked and skiers are supposed to remain within them. Windisch and Peiffer each picked a lane just before the markers. But Windisch suddenly moved in front and cut him off. Peiffer practically had to stop and change lanes, finishing 0.3 seconds behind Windisch. The jury ruled the move legal. Bild saw it differently, with the headline: Italien foult sich zu Biathlon-Bronze (Italy fouls its way to biathlon bronze). BD

Wasnt Russia supposed to have been banned from these Olympics for manipulating thousands of doping tests for its athletes before and during the 2014 Sochi Games? And yet more than 170 Russian athletes were allowed to compete in Pyeongchang under the vague title of Olympic Athletes from Russia. There was even a Russian House, even if it wasnt allowed to use that name. Whats a ban if it isnt really a ban? LC

Weve all had the conversation about which Olympic sport we could most easily participate in without any training. Maybe its one of the people who sweeps in curling. Or the guy in doubles luge who doesnt steer the sled. But thats all its supposed to be: a conversation. Elizabeth Swaney actually did it in competition. Swaney loopholed her way into a spot in the skiing halfpipe for Hungary and then cautiously coasted down the course. Its not what the Olympics is supposed to be about. The Olympics are supposed to be about corruption and blood doping. Im sorry, I mean the best athletes in the world. DG

The USs performance at the Games was

Without diminishing the efforts and commitment of the individual athletes themselves, its hard to characterize the collective outcome as anything but a disappointment. The 23 overall medals won fell short of the USOCs target goal of 37 medals and baseline of 25. And only 11 of those 23 came in sports that were on the program at the Calgary Olympics in 1988, when the United States hit rock bottom with six to prompt an overhaul of the entire winter sports infrastructure. The downward trends in two sports where the United States has traditionally thrived, speed skating and figure skating, showed no signs of reversing. And this was without a full-strength Russian side in the mix. Let the inquest begin. BAG

Erratic. Also unlucky in the case of Alpine skiing, where the rescheduling hurt Mikaela Shiffrins quest to win a ton of medals, but she still wound up with a gold and a silver. In biathlon and speedskating, the USA had a strong 2017 season but fell off sharply this season. Its not that the squad is considerably worse across the board, but theyre missing some of the rainmakers theyve had in the past. In 2010, the USA had three athletes Bode Miller, Johnny Spillane and Apolo Ohno win three medals each. This year, the only multimedalists were Shiffrin, snowboarder Jamie Anderson and the ice-dancing Shib Sibs, each with two. But nine gold medals and 23 in total arent bad, and the breakthroughs in cross-country skiing and curling, along with the womens hockey thriller, will be replayed on NBC for decades to come. BD

Sometimes the obsession over medals can cloud perceptions of what the Olympics is supposed to be about. But the US was expected to win more than 23 medals, especially after taking 28 and 37 in the last two Winter Games. There were great performances like Chloe Kim in the halfpipe, yet overall the American team fell far short of their goals. Especially disappointing were the figure skating and speed skating teams. LC

Just good enough. The US finished fourth in gold medals in fourth in total medals, far back of Donald Trumps beloved Norway, but Team USAs big successes Chloe Kim, the US womens ice hockey gold, Team Shusters upset curling gold (I believe one or two people called it the Miracurl On Ice) meant that a narrative of underperformance could never really stick. DG

One improvement for the Beijing Games

This marked the United States lowest medal haul since the 1998 Nagano Games, when they finished sixth in total medals with 13, the same below-average placement their eight medals earned in Sapporo 1972. Thats worrisome when you consider Beijing will be the third of three straight Olympics in the far east after Pyeongchang and the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. Theres always going to be a drop-off when you compete halfway the world, but lets just hope the USOC makes headway on whatever distance-based issues they can identify that are holding the team back. BAG

For organizers: start the Alpine skiing events before the opening ceremony so weather postponements wont compress the schedule so badly. For those who arent directly involved: get NHL players back in the Olympics. BD

Not only are cities finding it expensive to host Olympics but fans cant seem to afford the tickets. The everlasting image of Pyeongchang was event after event performed in front of empty stands. Its a lot to expect people from all over the world to spend thousands to come to the Olympics. Too often, the Games are held in places where locals cant afford to buy seats. In 2008 many Beijing residents were priced out of events being held in their neighborhoods: the IOC has to find a way to make tickets affordable otherwise they are just producing a television show before empty audiences. LC

None. In four years, I think well all be happy enough if the world is still in good enough shape for the Olympics to take place. DG

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us