Who's winning the Olympics? Not the U.S.!
Red-blooded patriots across America are, one must assume, swinging wildly between impotent rage and abject grief as they grapple with the harsh reality that, after more than a week of competition, Team USA has yet to win a gold medal at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the U.S. ranked fourth, with nine golds, eight silvers, and six bronzes.
In Beijing, the U.S. currently sits in 17th place behind New Zealand and the Czech Republic. American athletes have so far won four silver medals — in alpine skiing, figure skating, freestyle skiing, and snowboarding events — and a bronze in cross-country skiing.
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However, it should be noted that of the nine events for which the U.S. team won gold medals in Pyeongchang, six have not yet taken place.
U.S. athletes failed to medal at all in two of the three that have been held. Mikaela Shiffrin, who won gold in the women's giant slalom four years ago, wiped out on her opening run Monday and skied off the course. In the third, women's snowboard slopestyle, American Julia Marino won silver.
The six forthcoming events are women's snowboard halfpipe, men's snowboard halfpipe, cross-country skiing women's team sprint, women's ice hockey, men's freeski halfpipe, and men's curling.
Yahoo Sports reports that, according to BetMGM, the defending champion U.S. men's curling team is only "the No. 5 favorite" with "odds of +1200 to win the gold medal again."
Betting odds do, however, slightly favor the U.S. women's hockey team to repeat its gold-winning 2018 performance, but the team will likely face a championship re-match against Canada, which won't be an easy game. The U.S. lost to its northern neighbor 4-2 in the preliminary round Tuesday.
Except for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, in which American athletes did not participate, the U.S. has never failed to win at least one gold medal since the modern Olympics began in 1896.
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Grayson Quay was the weekend editor at TheWeek.com. His writing has also been published in National Review, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Modern Age, The American Conservative, The Spectator World, and other outlets. Grayson earned his M.A. from Georgetown University in 2019.
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