Olympicsports

The joke among the women of luge is that the highest non-German finisher at any race is the real winner, so strong is that team's grip on the top of the podium. Erin Hamlin is tired of being a punch line. "Yeah, it gets old," says Hamlin, 23, of Remsen, N.Y. "We improve every year, but we still have a place to look up to." With 97 consecutive World Cup wins dating back to 1997, the German hold has engendered that kind of black humor. Last year, Hamlin struck back with a gold medal at the World Championships on her home track at Lake Placid, a win that stunned the Germans, who even admitted their shock to reporters in an uncharacteristic moment of candor.

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.

Just hours before the caldron was lighted to mark the start of these Winter Olympics, a young athlete's life was snuffed out in a horrific crash on the world's fastest luge track. On a morning training run under the first blue sky in days, Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, of the Republic of Georgia lost control of his sled at about 80 mph as he came out of the final curve -- nicknamed Thunderbird -- and approached the finish line. He catapulted over the outer lip of the track and slammed into an unpadded roof support post.

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.

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.

The bride had red hair, so who was going to look twice when the world's most famous snowboarder found his place at the table, had a piece of cake and ended up slow-dancing with the woman in the wedding gown? Olympic gold medalist Shaun White . . . wedding crasher? Pretty funny when his day job is all about avoiding crashes. "I just said I was Uncle Ned's kid," White said, laughing, making a reference to the movie "Wedding Crashers." (Hmm . . . maybe Owen Wilson, with a hair-color switch to red, does play White in the Shaun White movie.

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.

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.

Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry met at a selection camp for an under-18 team -- or so Perry recalls. Getzlaf thought it wasn't until after the 2003 draft, in which the Ducks chose him 19th and Perry 28th, that they began forming the bond that led to having their names engraved on the Stanley Cup in 2007 and on Team Canada's roster for the Vancouver Olympics. After a moment's thought, Getzlaf decided Perry was right. "He made that team and I didn't," the rangy center said, "so that's why he remembers it."

Finland rallied from a two-goal third-period deficit to beat Slovakia 5-3 at Canada Hockey Place to win the bronze and deny Slovakia its first Olympic medal in any team sport. The fourth-place finish is Slovakia's best Olympic result. "It's just a tough pill to swallow," Marian Hossa said, "because I thought we had an unbelievable tournament, and we should be proud of ourselves, but the result is not what we wanted." Olli Jokinen scored two goals for Finland, while Slovakia fell despite a goal and assist from Hossa.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Ducks winger and U.S. team member Bobby Ryan is blogging for The Times during the Games. Here's his post heading into the gold-medal game against Canada: Hello again, everyone! The USA and Canada for the gold . . . this is monumental and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. Obviously the game is huge here in Canada, but it's great to hear about the excitement people have in the U.S. as well. We are obviously hoping we have another good showing, just like the last time we played them.

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.

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.

It was nearing midnight when he walked into the room, a kid in a black newsboy cap and checkered scarf, all red hair and childish smile, the class clown home from the high school dance. Somebody asked Shaun White to describe his ability "in a nutshell." White immediately started moving his hands around his face in mock terror. "Oh, no!" he said. "I'm in a nutshell!" Somebody else asked him about the best parts of the Olympics. "Honestly, it's about getting our gear," he said.

When speedskaters Brian Hansen, Jonathan Kuck and Chad Hedrick finished the team pursuit "A" final early Saturday afternoon, they could pat themselves on the back for winning a silver medal and officially start the U.S. chest-thumping for making history. Theirs was the 35th medal for Team USA in the 2010 Winter Olympics, one more than its record 34 at Salt Lake City in 2002. Steve Holcomb's four-man bobsled team added another later Saturday, the first U.S. gold in the sport since 1948.

Steve Holcomb said no one would care if he didn't win the four-man bobsled competition to end a 62-year-old U.S. drought. For the first time all week, the world's best bobsled driver this season was completely wrong. The reigning world champion and overall World Cup winner added Olympic gold to his list of accomplishments Saturday with a decisive win against a field that included the most decorated man in bobsled history and the driver with the most runs on the Whistler track.