In Canada, it was the most-watched TV program ever with 80% of Canadians seeing at least part of the game. From MediaWeek:

The matchup, meanwhile, was the most-watched television event in Canadian historically, with an average audience of 16.6 million viewers on the nine television networks within Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium. Almost one-half of the Canadian population watched the entire game on average, while 80 percent of Canadians saw some part of it.

Click on image below for a larger view

Related: More photos of the gold-medal winning U.S. bobsled team.

The Russian government is unhappy because it is remembering the “good old days” of the Cold War, 1949-1989.  This was when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were going head to head in sports, with each one avid to pile up the most Olympic medals and demonstrate its “superiority.” 

Moscow came out ahead because the Russian-dominated USSR had a vast region to pull athletes and coaches and resources from…meaning Russia proper and the other 14 countries that comprised the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics along with Russia.  East Germany — which came under Communist rule after the Soviet occupation during World War II, but competed independently from the USSR – also fattened the Communist medal haul. 

(In my analysis, I’m not counting the satellite communist countries of eastern Europe, like Poland and Czechoslovakia, because they competed independently from the USSR and didn’t dominate the medal standings like the Soviets did.  East Germany is a special case, because of issues devolving from the Soviet/Allied occupation, and also because East Germany became a communist powerhouse in the medals standing.)

So, during that balmy (for the Reds) era, it was usually the USSR that  won the most medals at each Winter Games.  The U.S. was usually an also-ran during those years.  Not only that, but the Soviets dethroned Canada as the hockey power. This was between 1956 and 1988.  Only in 1968 did a non-communist country – Norway – get the biggest pile.  In 1980, it was East Germany, not the USSR, that won the most medals.  Typically the Soviets ran off with anywhere from 16 to 29 medals at each Winter Games.

And what country dominated the Winter medals race before World War II, and before the USSR entered Olympic competition?  Usually it was Norway. 

Then in 1989, things started falling apart for Moscow.  The USSR  – with all its countries and its massive combined sports resources — began breaking up.  When the 14 other countries declared their independence and made their own affiliations with the IOC,  Russia  was left holding the bag on her old challenge of “superiority” and medal-winning. 

In 1990, after communism ended in East Germany and it reunited with the West, Germany started sending a single unified team to the Olympics. And guess what — in 1992, at the Albertville Winter Games in France, it was reunified Germany that wiped up the floor with the Soviets, and owned the podium with the most medals — 26!

In short, the radical rearrangement of ideological borders across Europe has meant a radical re-distribution of medals as well.   To put it another way — today, when the Russian premier growls that his winter-sports coaches should all be fired as punishment for their poor showing in Vancouver, he’s blaming them for something that isn’t their fault.

Here’s a closer look at the rearrangement.  In Vancouver, the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Estonia each sent their own independent teams — and each won 1 medal, meaning 4 medals that Moscow couldn’t get.  Meanwhile, Germany continues to be a major medal power in its own right, with its 30 medals in Vancouver.  So that totals 34 medals that Russia might have had if the old regime had still been in place.   This explains a great deal about why the Russians are pissed.

Another factor working against Russian wins is this: additional countries coming on strong in winter sports, like Japan, South Korea and the People’s Republic of China. They’re now nabbing medals that the Soviets used to get as a matter of course – like figure skating.

Yet another problem for Moscow is its own dire economic problems.  Some Russian athletes flee a growing poverty of sports resources in their own country — to live and train in Europe, Canada and the U.S.

Oddly enough, the Russian haul in Vancouver wasn’t much smaller than that 16 or so that the Soviets used to win in the glory days. 

It’s true that the pie is bigger now.  There are more winter sports to compete in, like halfpipe and snowboarding.  But there are many more countries competing hungrily for pieces of that pie now – 82 in 2010, compared to 32 countries in 1956.  And hungry Canada has worked to recapture dominance in hockey.

That Vancouver total of 15 is in no way a disgrace to the individual Russian athletes who competed with their whole hearts.  Russian talent hasn’t changed.  It’s the world that has changed. 

So the next time around, with the 2014 Winter Games held on their own turf, the Russian government isn’t going to win more medals by playing politics, or throwing tantrums, or punishing their people.  The best thing they can do is…stop living in the past.  I hope they will do what every other country in the medals standing has been doing.  Namely, work hard to develop new talent, and support their athletes and coaches in the most positive ways possible.

After that, the top search terms are for our boy Johnny Weir. In fact, ‘Johnny Weir’ beat out ‘Johnny Weir gay‘ but just a couple hundred searches. It’s not a big surprise: Few sites have covered Johnny and his sexuality more than we have, and this blog was no exception. The fourth most searched term was ‘Evan Lysacek gay.’ You can’t blame people for searching that term after those outfits he wore. ‘Evan Lysacek’ was a distant 16th in search term popularity for us.

Rounding out the Top 10 search terms: ‘Tanith Belbin,’ ‘Johnny Weir roommate,’ ‘Nodar Kumaritashvili,’ ‘is Johnny Weir gay,’ ‘nastia liukin,’ and ‘medal count.’ We’ve had several discussions on the site about the medal count, and seeing that search term appear in our top 10 says people around the world were closely watching it.

Some search terms that made us chuckle (or raise an eyebrow): No. 34 was ‘Johnny Weir boyfriend’ (sorry, we don’t know who it is); No. 44 was someone none of us had heard of until a week ago, ‘Gregor Schlierenzauer,’ the hot Austrian ski jumper; No. 49 was ‘Scott Moir gay,’ referring to one half of the gold-medal ice dancing team; And ‘Olympic blunders’ showed up (kudos to the Canadians for handling it with class in the closing ceremony, as it was clearly on the minds of lots of people).

I think the presence of Pride House was a good thing. If nothing else, it was a starting point for the mainstream media to talk about gay issues in sports. I wondered what kind of impact Pride House would really have. Would any gay athletes show up there? Does renting a conference room and calling it gay really move sports or the Olympics forward? The Toronto Star answered over the weekend: No and no.

At Pride House, the pioneering gay, lesbian, transgendered and queer pavilion at the Vancouver Olympics, the atmosphere has been celebratory: champagne flowed at its opening party, and visitors to its Whistler location at the boutique hotel Pan Pacific Whistler Village Centre quaffed cocktails daily.

Never mind that the gay athletes haven’t exactly shown up.

I’m glad Pride House existed this year, since it did draw some media coverage and at least made more people aware that gays are in sports. But cocktails and champagne aren’t going to change anyone’s mind, make the NHL decide to enact gay anti-discrimination policies, or open any doors for closeted Olympians. People like Brendan and Brian Burke will have a thousand times the impact than a gay cocktail party at the Olympics will have.

While previous Olympics have had unofficial gay hangouts, “this is the first time that we’ve had a pavilion,” says [organizer Dean] Nelson. “We have major art installations, sponsors helping fund this place.”

Sorry, but a sculpture of a naked hockey player doesn’t help athletes come out.

From everything I’ve heard and read, Pride House was, at the end of the day, a great marketing tool for Gay Whistler and Gay Ski Week (starting today), a fun place for gay visitors to meet one another and share cocktails, a launching point for the straight media to discuss our issues, and a good venue for some conversation between the converted. That’s a pretty good accomplishment! Hopefully, with two years to prepare and two more years of social progress, the Pride House in London can accomplish everything they hoped for and more.

Did you go to Pride House? What were your impressions of it?

Hat tip to Canmark.

A day after the Vancouver Games, and four years before the Winter Olympics are to be hosted by Sochi, Russia, President Medvedev is calling for the resignations of everyone involved with training Russian Olympic athletes.

“Those who are responsible for training for the Olympics must take responsibility,” Mr. Medvedev said on Monday. “They must have the courage to submit their resignation,” he said. “And if they do not have this resolve, we will help them.”

That’s the Olympic spirit! Not sure what “we will help them” means, but Russia’s disgraced hockey coach had this suggestion (I’m honestly not sure whether sarcasm is implied…. Do Russian’s do sarcasm???)

“Let’s put up a bunch of guillotines and gallows,” Vyacheslav Bykov, the team’s coach was quoted as saying last week. “We have 35 people on the hockey team. Let’s go to Red Square and dispatch with them all.”

I’m looking forward to Sochi 2014. I just hope the host country has enough coaches and athletes left to field a delegation.

“It’s a symbol of the fact that someone may have, um, committed suicide or someone may have murdered somebody at that spot,” he says.

Just what you want in an Olympic logo.

I have them on tape, so haven’t started watching, but I did see that they spoofed the torch malfunction. Use this as your Closing Ceremonies thread, and I await to see what Jimmy D. says, that scurvy-riddled weasel.©

I loved these Olympics, despite their glitches, especially the cross-country events, the biathlon and hockey. And even men’s skating was interesting for once.

I had no real rooting interest, but was glad when the U.S. tied it with 24.4 seconds left in regulation on a goal by Zach Parise. It meant the game would go into OT. I imagine Canadians everywhere went into shock on Parise’s goal.

Despite giving up the game-winner, Miller was clearly the best goalie in the game. If not for Miller, Canada would have won 6-1. In contrast, Canadian goalie Roberto Luongo was shaky and prone to dropping the puck from his glove like a butter-fingered wide receiver. In consecutive games, he almost blew leads of 3-0 (vs. Slovakia) and 2-0 (vs. the U.S.). He was lucky he had the better team in front of him. Miller was named the tournament MVP, deservedly.

This game meant so much to Canada, so I am glad for them. I even got caught up in everyone singing “Oh, Canada” at the medal ceremony. And watching each of the players on both teams get their medals was seeing one hottie after another. In contrast, hockey is clearly a step-child sport in the U.S., so a win would have been nice, but not really that big of a deal nationally (the 1980 “Miracle On Ice” meant something because of the geo-politics of the time).

This will clearly have been the most-watched sporting event in Canadian history and likely the most-watched hockey game ever in the U.S. It was nice that the game matched the hype.

SI’s Luke Winn, sitting the the stands, took this cool shot during the awards ceremony: