Olympicsports

Kim Yuna had boot problems. The reigning world figure skating champion took the ice for her morning practice at the Toronto Cricket Skating & Curling Club, skated a few minutes, then limped off. Kim removed her right skate and gave it to her mother, Park Mee-Hee, who had been watching from beyond a glass wall that separates the club's lounge from the rink. This unremarkable episode two months before the Winter Olympics would have been headline news in South Korea, where three TV networks had shown her arrival at a November Grand Prix event in Lake Placid, N.Y., then run endless loops of her fall on a triple loop jump in . . . practice.

Dutch speedskater Sven Kramer is considering hiring an additional coach after a disastrous error by his current one cost him a second gold medal. Kramer said Sunday he was not planning to dump Gerard Kemkers but may add another coach to his team for the 2014 Games. Kramer won the 5,000-meter race in Vancouver. In the 10,000, Kemkers sent him into the wrong lane during a crossover deep into a race he was well on his way to winning. More miscommunication cost the Dutch team pursuit a spot in the final.

There always has been an austere quality about Evan Lysacek. He is tall, angular, often dressed in black, always concerned about having everything about his life in order. You see this side of him immediately upon entering his Los Angeles house, especially in the pictures that he paints for relaxation. Sasha Cohen, the 2006 Olympic figure skating silver medalist, has been Lysacek's friend for 13 years. She once spent two months as his guest while taking acting lessons near the house Lysacek was renting in Hollywood.

The United States left Vancouver with a record 37 medals. A look at each of the American medal winners: Alpine skiing LINDSEY VONN Downhill: Gold Vonn, the top female ski racer in the world, delivered the race of her life despite a sore right shin. Relegating teammate and rival Julia Mancuso to the silver medal only intensified the drama. Super-G: Bronze This may be the race that haunts Vonn, as the gold-medal favorite nailed the tricky upper section "Fog Bank," then let off the gas near the end. That cost her gold to Austria and the silver to Slovenia.

It was nearly midnight Thursday, the day of triumph running into the day after, and both Kim Yuna and Brian Orser already were looking at the days ahead. The skater and her coach were in a car going from post-competition doping control to a news conference that would be aired live in South Korea, where half the country's 48 million people already had watched TV broadcasts of their national hero becoming their first Olympic figure skating champion. During the 20-minute ride, Kim and Orser could have sat back and looked at the gold medal she won three hours earlier with a performance of record-breaking, mind-boggling quality.

It was after midnight, a week ago, the U.S. had earlier defeated Canada in a preliminary-round Olympic hockey game, the emptying streets wet, the mood soggy. I was returning from our nightly visit to the giant four-pronged Olympic flame with my 15-year-old daughter, Mary Clare, who was wearing an American flag like a cape, and a smile like a necklace. It was one of the first times she wore something that didn't represent her high school or favorite sports team. It was one of the first moments she may have realized the pride in being an American.

Bill Johnson was always five pounds of dynamite in a four-pound box. When he was a kid, the cops could not contain him. Oh, they'd catch him now and then -- breaking into houses or stealing a car -- but they couldn't quell the explosive temperament. "Wild Bill," they called him. Downhill racing has always attracted such mad dogs and misfits -- it's almost a job requirement. Who else but a crazy person skims down a frozen Popsicle at 90 mph? So it seems somehow prearranged that, on ice-caked vistas, Johnson would find an outlet for his lawless zeal.

No gold on the home turf 1 Canada has not won a gold medal in its two home Olympics -- summer and winter. To avoid a repeat of that, the Canadian Olympic Committee started a funding program called Own the Podium before the 2006 Winter Games, and it produced an all-time-best performance of seven golds, 10 silvers and seven bronzes. (The country was third in total medals behind Germany, 29, and the United States, 25.) Daniel Johnson, an associate professor of economics at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, is among those who predict that Canada will win more medals than any other country.

I am gliding across the ice on bended knee -- a Prince Charming wedding proposal, a disco move gone very, very bad. I think my jeans just came unbuttoned. In one hand, a broom; in the other, a significant chunk of Scottish granite. Curling, will you marry me? "The thing about curling is that there's no booing," one of my instructors says. "Curling is a gentleman's sport." Yeah, right. Till now. For the first time in my life, I am curling. For the first time in my life, I am better at something than 99% of humankind.

Finally. In their fourth try, one of the most dazzling pairs teams in history won an Olympic title. And a gold medal didn't go to a Russian pair for the first time since 1960. The Chinese proverb about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step applies perfectly to what happened in the 2010 pairs figure skating final Monday night at the Pacific Coliseum. Shen Xue, 31, and Zhao Hongbo, 36, completed an odyssey that they began as skating partners in 1992.

In the beginning, on the morning of the opening ceremony, there was the death of an athlete pursuing his sport, a life snuffed out at age 21 in a way so awful it will forever haunt the memory of the 2010 Winter Olympics. In the end, a few hours before the Olympic flame burning here for 17 days went out Sunday night, there was an athletic moment so brilliant it also will be an everlasting memory of these Games. In between, there were organizational problems that will be forgotten, the same way they disappeared after the first few days, when the sun came out in this glimmering city and sparkled over fresh mountain snow limned against an impossibly blue sky. Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili will live forever as a symbol of what can go horribly wrong when athletes push the limits under conditions that some say were questionable, from the design of a sliding track officials already knew was both unusually fast and dangerously unforgiving, to the relative inexperience of the athlete in a sport where split-second decisions at 90 mph are required.

This ebullient, stone-washed city put on a roaring grand finale Sunday night, a sparkling celebration marked with fireworks, flames and wedding-day smiles. Were they happy here? Only in a Paris-is-liberated, hats-and-heels-in-the-air sort of way. Guess they like their hockey here. So peace out, Vancouver. Sweeter than syrup, you people. Sunday's closing ceremony was a long, over-the-top farewell for a nation of people who seem incapable of booing. Maybe they were on their best behavior for the guests, but you usually can't fake this kind of stuff.

O Canada, did it ever fill the arena, everyone singing, players with their thick arms draped around one another, fans weeping into their giant red jerseys, surely one of the loudest anthems ever. You know what? Let Canada sing. It earned it. It needed it. The joy, the relief, the redemption, and, of course, the farewell. On the final day of Canada's official duties as Olympic hosts, its national sport survived America's national grit Sunday, winning the gold-medal hockey game over the United States in overtime, 3-2, in front of a bouncing sea of braying red. The winners celebrated with the game's best ice dancing, nearly two dozen men locked in a jumping, board-rattling embrace.

Their celebration had barely begun when someone handed members of the triumphant Canadian Olympic hockey team a huge flag as they stood on the ice at Canada Hockey Place. What to do? Make the kid carry it. "Yeah, he needed to do something," team captain Scott Niedermayer said, smiling. So there was Kings defenseman Drew Doughty , in his second NHL season but an Olympic first-timer, taking an enforced but happy lap around the ice after Canada's 3-2 overtime victory over the U.S. on Sunday.

Their game, their gold, but the Olympic hockey finale between Canada and the U.S. belonged to history before the roars triggered by Sidney Crosby's overtime goal had faded by so much as a decibel Sunday. Crosby, whose silence the previous two games had led a nation to brood, took a pass from Jarome Iginla and rifled a shot through the legs of U.S. goaltender Ryan Miller 7 minutes 40 seconds into overtime, giving Canada a 3-2 victory in the last event of perhaps the last Olympic tournament that will include NHL players.

Worldsnowboarding.com offered a comprehensive look at the quaint mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana, Russia, with one seemingly minor disclaimer. The website said the resort's only disadvantage was its size and mild climate, "which means there is a risk to find too little snow at the lower runs even in January." Wait a minute. . . . Didn't we just go through this for the last two weeks, let alone the furious lead-up effort to redistribute snow to weather-challenged Cypress Mountain?

ALPINE SKIING A new look for super combined Anja Paerson, who leads active Alpine skiers with 41 World Cup victories, is the favorite in Thursday's super combined. The super combined is the only event that has changed its format since the 2006 Turin Games. Whereas the combined was a three-run event with one downhill and two slalom runs, the current version incorporates a downhill run and one slalom run. The winner is the skier with the fastest composite time. FIGURE SKATING It's Lysacek chasing Plushenko For once, there probably is more U.S. interest in men's figure skating than women's, as Evan Lysacek of the U.S., in second place after the short program, tries to catch Evgeny Plushenko of Russia in Thursday's free program.

"I always encouraged her to have confidence in herself, to believe in her dreams." The memory of the mother's words gave powerful warmth through the chill of the Pacific Coliseum on Tuesday night, connecting hands, filling eyes, lifting her child. "The hurdles she faces motivate her to rise above them, Joannie has always been naturally determined and persevering." On Sunday morning here, Therese Rochette, who spoke those words, died suddenly of a heart attack.

Defenseman Jack Johnson of the Kings said he and his U.S. teammates have been scrambling to reschedule their flights out of Vancouver because they were booked to leave town before Sunday's gold-medal game against Canada. "They scheduled all the Americans to fly out Sunday morning. Whoever is in charge of this scheduled us to fly out tomorrow morning, and I think the Russians and Swedes are supposed to fly out on Monday," Johnson said. "I'm glad we get to change that." The NHL Players Assn.

With each passing day, the weight pressed a little heavier on their shoulders. Some of the Canadian athletes tried to shrug it off, but it was tough to ignore all that talk about dominating on home soil and owning the podium. "You grow up in Canada," said Hayley Wickenheiser, captain of the women's hockey team, "you know the expectations." A week into the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, every athlete wearing a maple leaf knew the True North Strong and Free looked downright feeble with only six medals.