And so ends another Olympics where the athletes that spent years of training and preparing, and giving their all for leaving Americans everywhere feeling proud and like champions. Greetings all and welcome back to Ice Cold Sports part of the Radio Blog Network, I am the one and only Iceman here to close out what was a fantastic and memorable winter Olympics.
Team USA like the mens hockey team entered these Olympics as underdogs. Projected to finish anywhere between forth and sixth in the final medal count. The Americans however had other ideas. Not only did they win the medal count. They set a new world record with 37 total medals. We played well in events we were expected to like Alpine Skiing, whom cashed in with eight medals led by superstars Lindsey Vonn, Bode Miller, and Julia Mancuso. USA again dominated in the sport I guess you can say "invented" as Shawn White led the American snowboard team to numerous medals. And then you have speed skating led by the now most decorated winter Olympian Apolo Ohno who is now set to retire from olympic competition and also led by Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis.
And then we have the group that became firsts, ended droughts, and stole the show. For the first time ever, we had American athletes medal in the Nordic Combined event. Not only did American's medal in this for the first time, but they brought home four. On the eve of the last day we saw an American bobsled team win gold for the first time since 1948 in the four man sled competition. Days before this figure skater Evan Lysacek won gold in the mens singles, the first time thats happened since Brian Bointano in 1988.
But of course most of the attention fell on the men's hockey team who as well all know, were expected to do very little. You may remember me last week talking about all this the first time they beat Canada. The end result may have been different that that game but the message stands. USA hockey should be recognized as legitamate program after earning their second silver medal in the last three Olympics.
When the Neilson Ratings came out I was shocked when I saw just how high the ratings actually were. Keep in mind us Americans don't care about hockey. The rating NBC got was a 17.6 which translates to one out of every three homes. In fact... this one game got a higher rating than every world series game since 2004, every NBA finals game since 1998 and every NCAA Final Four game since at least 1998. When you exclude the NFL, the only event to beat this one hockey game was the BCS title game featuring Alabama and Texas. Lets just go to say that this impacted the country and game bigger than we ever expected. The NHL can only hope to benefit from that and it'll be interesting to see if the league allows its players to return in four years to Russia. They let Sidney Crosby win gold in his home country, will they let Alex Ovechkin do the same?
I wouldn't normally close with something like this but what is suppose to provide entertainment actually provided some hard depth truth. I give you a text message submitted to the popular website text from last night dot com.
It comes from area code 940. For those who do not know or didn't google it, this hails from the great state of Texas. It reads..Canada: barely better than America at a sport they invented.
That there folks speaks the truth. Amazing how I was told that USA choked in that game. You would think that the team who blew the two goal lead to have to win in overtime to get the choke rap. But thats how it goes and I can't say enough how proud I am of that team. With that said I hope they'll get a little more respect in 2014 and should be a medal favorite. Not just the hockey team, but the country as whole. You would have to assume that coming off a world record performance. Thanks for joining me today. See ya next time on the next addition of Ice Cold Sports part of the radio blog network.
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