Faster

If the Swiss, Swedes, Austrians or Norwegians get to the finish line, the IOC would be stupid to not give them the games. To finally get one of them to the day of voting and hand the Games back to Canada or Italy would be worse than giving the World Cup to Qatar.

It depends on if Korea is serious about being a sliding country or just invested in the sport for the home Olympics. Canada wasn't a sliding country in 1988 and look at Canada now. Lots of people would have said looking at Calgary that it would be a white elephant and in 4 years time there will be three tracks in Asia relatively close together. Enough to make it worth the World Cup trip, just like having Lake Placid, Park City, Calgary and Vancouver make it worth the trip now.

The USOC and organizational groups within Salt Lake for one.

The defending World Champion and only women's team to go undefeated (against a stronger field) to win those World Championships is not a choker internationally. She has made the playoffs at ever WC she has been to and only ever lost to the eventual World Champion.

It is hard to gauge because a lot of peoples opinions are tied to how ones own country did. (Canadians in general view Atlanta very fondly for instance but not Sydney or Athens). But the Olympics were low-key and nice. CBC's coverage wasn't the greatest. They've lost a lot of sports commentator talent due to cut-backs, lay-offs and retirements. So what was left wasn't always the greatest. The crushing disappointment of curling is hard to take. Especially since it wasn't like these were surprise low-ranked Canadian teams Homan is the defending World Champion and Koe is a two-time World Champion with 2 Olympic Gold Medalist on his team. It wasn't like the women's teams in 2002, 2006 and 2010 where skips past their prime got hot at the trials. I think Curling Canada put way too mush pressure on the teams and they cracked. Not allowing Homan to bring her natural alternate in Cheryl Kreviazuk (and yes she is related to the singer) and supplanting her natural coach with Rene Sonneburg was not a good choice. Add in Alex Harvery. If that guy had been Norwegian or German or Finnish he'd have 4 medals. He's Canadian and walked away with nothing. Also the equipment issues with bobsleigh was a little disappointing. You'd think OTP would have helped fund the team properly. Getting so close to 30 medals and coming up short. And I know Canada did really well, but the misses were just so bad. Thankfully so much of the team that won medals are young. There is a lot of potential still across freestyle skiing, short track and snowboarding. Beijing will be an interesting comparison. Hopefully they will tone things down a bit. But China's performance was shockingly bad for them. So we might be in for another Russia but with the brains to not get caught.

The Men's World Championships is at the end of March and the Women's is mid March. The men's field is gonna be pretty light, the women's is going to be similar to the Olympics.

I only have to wait about a week.

Thank you. Really hoping Germany wins in the gold medal game. And hopefully this inspires a new generation of German kids to play hockey so that there is a dozen Leon Draisaitl instead of just one.

Sweden was always the favourite. Edin has been lights-out for almost two years now.

Still having trouble comparing the relative performances because of how many more events are being contested now compared to Lillehammer in 1994. 34 events have been added and Canada performs well in the new events. As a percentage of Olympic champions Pyeongchang stands third at 9.80% and third for total medals on offer at 8.82%. Obviously there is a lot more medals to come, but even in a most optimistic 12 golds and 30 medals, it only bumps those percentages up into 2nd place behind the performances in Vancouver. With potentially no hockey or curling gold (traditional) the number of gold won is impressive. But still. The biggest improvement I see is that for the first time Canada is producing athletes that win multiple medals across multiple Olympics outside of short track speed skating. It really started with le May Doan. Also another big criticism of Canadian athletes in the past is that they peak too early. In these Olympics you've had a fair number of athletes (Serwa and Leman in the last day and a half, Bloeman etc.) peak at the Olympics and turn those peaks into gold medals. Something that was missing before when Canada had an army of strong freestyle skiers that never got it done at the Olympics. I mean there have been misses there too, but damn it is nice.

My vote for flagbearer is Kim Boutin.

Just from predicted medals left. Alex Harvey - 50km Classic Men's Curling Men's Hockey (I think a medal is in the bag now with a semi-final against Germany) Kaitlyn Osmond - Ladies Figure Skating Samual Girard - 500m Short Track (would have to get through a very tough quarter-final) (4th place in the fastest 500m in history, also first time since Nagano that a Canadian didn''t medal in that race) 1000m Short Track - all 3 Canadians are potential medalist (Silver medal in one of the most enjoyable races I've seen in awhile) 5000m Relay (got a medal, but they should have won, Hamelin cost Canada the gold) Men's Big Air - lots of predictions of two medals. Vincent d'Haitre - 1000m speed skating (if he's recovered from the ankle injury) Ivanie Blondin - mass start Not Predicted but a good chance at a medal. 4-man bobsleigh Ladies Ski Cross (3 Canadians were the three top qualifiers) (I guess I could have put this in predicted but Simmerling was injuried and not selected, but 2 medals)

I hope I am wrong, but the Americans look to be the better team. Szabados will have to have the game of her life for Canada to win.

I have never been a fan of Christie but her attempt in the 1000m was the definition of gutsy. She went for it not being close to 100% and she nearly did it.

Even with the malfunction they still only scored like 0.12 off their personal best and that was with a clearly not synchronized swizzle scored as a 4.