I'm super proud to be Canadian! That was amazing.

Number of gold medals >>>>>> Total medals in terms of importance.

My roommate actually really got me into hockey last fall. I'd liked it before, but didn't watch it much. The Olympic gold medal games were really good though. I was impressed. Congratulations to Canada on a very good job. (My girlfriend is Canadian, so I win twice. )

And amen to that. Who wants to watch cars turning left for hours? No offense to anyone who likes it. It's just not for me.

There be a bit of jealousy in this thread

To the "who cares about the Winter Olympics" crowd: 82 countries participated, 25 countries had medals and tons of people around the world care a great deal, so grow up and don't be so silly.

In fact, the Winter Olympics is still showing a lot of growth. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about this olympics

Cayman Islands, Colombia, Ghana, Montenegro, Pakistan, Peru and Serbia made their winter Olympic debuts. Also Jamaica, Mexico and Morocco returned to the games after missing the Turin Games. Tonga sought to make its Winter Olympic debut by entering a single competitor in luge, attracting some media attention, but he crashed in the final round of qualifying.[42] Luxembourg qualified two athletes[43] but did not participate because one did not reach the criteria set by the NOC[44] and the other was injured[45] before the Games.


To the "Total vs. Gold medal count" people. Both are pretty important, but neither discounts the other. Canada's achievement of most golds ever in a winter olympics is pretty damn big. As for the article about Canada conceding medal defeat to the states, that was halfway through the olympics, before we picked up and won record breaking gold.

To the "Winter is less important because it's monopolized by a few countries" crowd, there certainly is more of a focus on countries with norther climates for obvious reasons, but I think the fact that 14 gold medals is the record is pretty telling that it's not exactly a monopoly. In the Bejing olympics, China had 51 gold medals, followed by USA with 36. How is that much gold flying out the door make a games more exciting?

To Canada : Congratulations! This was an awesome Olympics. And damn it ended in style with that game. A friend and I watched the game live at 5 in the morning (an ex-pat sports bar stayed open for it). There were at least 200 of us going crazy all night long. Good times.

It's good they came through after the first week of completely failing to "own the podium."

Although while the most gold metals ever... I wonder if it's the highest percentage of gold medals ever... or it's partially due to the addition of events.

As for counting who "wins" the olympics... both medal count and gold medals only are stupid if you ask me.

Gold's shouldn't be all that counts, but a bronze shouldn't = gold.

The best way is a middle ground. 3 points for a gold, 2 for a silver... 1 for a bronze.

Which breaks down to

USA - 70
Germany - 63
Canada - 61

or 5 for a gold, 3 for a silver and 1 for a bronze.

USA - 103
Germany - 96
Canada - 96

I haven't really sure whether 5 bronzes shoud equal a silver or 3 really... but I think it's a system that works well for considering success on a nationwide level.

I'm actually shocked such a system isn't used.  I just always thought it was a given and never paid enough attention to the olympics to notice others.

I probably watched more curling this year then i've watched total olympics ever... and curling was just on because it was one station above what i was watching so it was good for between commercials.

Congratulations Canada.

i was suprissded though that canada beat usa,cos usa had already beaten them.still ,impressive