Quotes

The U.S. performance comes as a surprise in part because America has never won the medal count at a Winter Olympics Games. The closest it came was Salt Lake City, where it took second in total medals (behind Germany) and third in the gold-medal count (behind Germany and Norway). But the performance is also a surprise because USOC officials had adamantly refused to speculate about America's performance in Vancouver. While Canadian officials boasted of their $120 million own-the-podium program and predicted a total medal count of 35, officials of the USOC remained silent. A year before the Games, the USOC targeted $16 million mainly toward events where the U.S. had the best chances for medals rather than equally across the board, said Alan Ashley, chief of sport performance for the USOC. "We'll let the chips fall where they fall," Mr. Ashley said in an interview ahead of the 2010 Games. Pressed to make a medal-count prediction, he said, "I think we have the potential to have a very experienced team that will go there with great performances." The global recession also hurt U.S. Olympians more than those from countries where athletes rely almost entirely on government funding. When the U.S. speedskating team lost a primary sponsor to the recession, comedian Stephen Colbert managed to get his name on their uniforms while spending barely a dime of his own. In an episode that gave the U.S. Olympic team a bargain-basement image, Colbert Nation gained major-sponsor status on the roughly $350,000 that his viewers kicked in. Yet this week, the joke has been on the competition. U.S. athletes have performed well even in events like Nordic combined, in which America traditionally has stunk. Johnny Spillane was a ski length away from the gold in Nordic combined when he settled for the silver, the first-ever medal for the U.S. in the sport. But most encouraging is that America's dominance has been widespread. In figure skating Evan Lysacek put the hammer to Russia's defending gold medalist, Evgeni Plushenko. Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso made a mockery of the women's downhill, as Ms. Vonn finished an absurd 1.46 seconds ahead of the bronze medalist Elisabeth Görgl.