Did We Really Count To One Hundred?

After 94 years of the Winter Olympics, the United States finally won its one hundredth Winter Olympic gold medal at the 2018 PyeongChang Games when Shaun White - he of the dubious character - won the gold medal in men's halfpipe snowboarding.  The U.S. has won more gold medals at PyeongChang since then.  Including a gold medal in men's curling!  Can you feel the excitement??

Americans have won ten times as many gold medals at the regular Olympics since the modern Olympic movement began in the 1890s.  Why did it take so long to get a hundred gold medals in the Winter Olympics?  Because we've become a serious winter-sports nation only recently.  We Americans had long paid more attention to sports played in milder weather, and the Winter Olympics were always something of a lighthearted diversion for us. Everyone talks about how we haven't been doing so well this time, 2018, but given that, at this writing, we're fourth overall in the number of medals won - with nine gold medals, eight silver medals, and six bronze medals for a total of 23 medals overall - we've been pretty competitive.

I remember the 1980s, when our performances at the Winter Games were so horrible, most people in this country didn't even bother to watch the Winter Games on TV.  The champion 1980 U.S Olympic hockey team was an exception.  But it was worse before that.  Four American athletes, including figure skater Scott Hamilton, won gold medals at the Sarajevo Winter Games in 1984. Compare that to only two at the Cortina d'Ampezzo Winter Games in 1956  - Hayes Alan Jenkins and Tenley Albright, in men's and women's figure skating, respectively - or only three for the 1972 Sapporo Winter Games -  Barbara Cochran in women’s slalom skiing, Anne Henning in the 500-meter women’s speed skating race, and Dianne Holum in the 1500m women’s speed skating event.  You know how the group of U.S. female figure-skating Olympic gold medalists is considered the most exclusive women's club in America?  Peggy Fleming, the 1968 Olympic women's figure skating champion, is an even more exclusive club - the club of American gold medalists in the 1968 Grenoble Winter Games.  She's the only member.  Just as speed skater Terry McDermott, who won the 500m men's speed-skating race at the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Olympics, is the only American Winter Olympic gold medalist from that year.  (And no one was likely paying attention to McDermott because the Beatles were paying their first visit to America at the time.)  And if the U.S. hockey team from the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, where the United States won six gold medals, wanted to have a reunion with all of the other gold medalists from those Games,  it would be a reunion of only themselves . . . and speed skater Eric Heiden, who won the other five.

My point - and I do have one - is  that Team USA has improved greatly since the bad old days when athletes from the Communist countries kept besting Americans at the Winter Games. We've recently been moving more closely to becoming a winter-sport powerhouse because, as I wrote in a blog post during the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, we decided that we didn't want to be a laughingstock in winter sports anymore.  We'll never be as good as Norway - being so close to the Arctic Circle would give any country a huge advantage in skating and skiing - but at least now we're not the never-rans we always seemed to be in decades past.

Let's just hope that it doesn't take us another ninety-odd years to win another one hundred Winter Olympic gold medals.

The list of the first one hundred U.S. Winter Olympics gold medalists is here.