Winners and losers from the Pyeongchang Olympics

When I checked in at the media village before the Sochi Olympics four years ago, I was told it would be a minute. They were making the bed.

As in, constructing it. With hammers and nails.

A few days later, the elevators stopped working. You could take the stairs, but first you had to open a door with no knob.

The elevators worked two years ago at the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, sort of. My room was on the eighth floor. You pressed 7 to get to it. Sometimes the elevator’s bottom aligned with the floor when the doors opened, sometimes it was off by five or six inches.

At the Pyeongchang Olympics: You could press a button in your room to summon the elevator, then receive notification when it arrived.

You didn’t hear about problems here with lost bus drivers or blown water heaters or inedible food (the most palatable item at the Rio cafeteria was Velveeta pizza) because there weren’t any. I’ve covered 16 of these things, and this may be the best in terms of logistics and hospitality.

Too bad more people didn’t get to experience it.

If there was a downside to these Olympics, other than the Norovirus that swept through the staffers, it is the troubling trend of dwindling attendance. Other than families of athletes, tourists were scared off by political tensions in Sochi and Zika (and a whole bunch of other stuff) in Rio — and locals couldn’t afford tickets.

It was a different problem here. Events were pushed to mornings or late nights to accommodate NBC and European television, and the Pyeongchang area is not heavily populated. And for Seoul’s 10 million residents, it meant a 2 1/2-hour train followed by a bus to reach venues — so you left at 6 a.m. or got home at 3 a.m.

Result: Empty seats everywhere except short track speed skating, which was one of the few events held at a normal hour (7 p.m.) and which is a South Korean obsession. There was no soul from Seoul.

But everything else about the past three weeks was outstanding: venues, organization, technology, transportation, staffing, security. Koreans should grab a gold medal and place it around their own neck.

Here’s a look at other winners and losers:

Winner: Norway

The country of 5.3 million won so much — 14 golds and 39 overall medals, both Winter Olympic records — that it ran out of special gold-colored shoes it issues to victorious athletes for medal ceremonies. The 39, nine more than its pre-Games target, broke the Winter Olympics record set by the United States in 2010. Marit Bjoergen won four cross-country skiing medals, making her the most decorated Winter Olympian in history with 14. The next two athletes on the list, of course, are also Norwegians. But her record might not be safe. Johannes Klaebo won three golds in his Olympic debut, at age 21.

Loser: Russia

With athletes doped to the gills, they won 13 gold medals. With a diluted team of 168 athletes who had supposedly passed a strict anti-doping review, competing as the awkwardly named Olympic Athletes from Russia, they won one or two golds, depending on the late men’s hockey final. (Yeah, the drugs work.) But the one thing the Russians absolutely couldn’t have happen, did. First, a curler tested positive and had his bronze medal stripped. Then a bobsledder tested positive, just weeks after filming a commercial wearing a white sweatshirt that said, in English: “I don’t do doping.” We can’t make this stuff up.

Winner: U.S. women’s hockey

They won last March, threatening to boycott the World Championships in Michigan unless USA Hockey stopped dragging its feet on a new contract that provided equitable pay and support with the men’s program (which it did, after no one would play on its scab team). Then they won again here, getting a late goal to force overtime against nemesis Canada and prevailing in a dramatic shootout in the game of the Games.

Loser: NHL

Commissioner Gary Bettman and the NHL decided they would rather remain a niche sport in North America instead of using the global platform of the Olympics to extend their reach into Asia and beyond. Mission accomplished.

Winner: Mirai Nagasu

For the past six weeks, the figure skater from Arcadia captivated America with her hard-luck story of being left off the 2014 Olympic team despite finishing third at the U.S. Championships, sitting on the roof of her parents’ house eating an In-N-Out burger to decide her competitive future, coming back, making the 2018 team, becoming the first U.S. woman to land the elusive triple axel at Winter Games, enchanting media with her ditzy charm.

Loser: Mirai Nagasu

And then blew it all in six minutes of interviews after a dreadful free program in the individual event. She clicked off excuses like Russians do triple jumps: cold showers, early bedtimes, traffic on the way to a Lunar New Year celebration at USA House, the exhausting team event, walking in the opening ceremony. When someone politely asked about the struggles of U.S. skaters, she chucked a Canadian skater who had fallen even more under the bus. She said she considered the Olympic free program — the apex of a skater’s lifelong journey — merely an audition for “Dancing with the Stars,” which she deserves to be on because “I want to be a star.” Two words: Train. Wreck.

Winner: The Olympic Gaymes

For a couple of guys who finished 10th and 12th in their individual events, figure skater Adam Rippon and freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy sure received a lot of attention. As they should. As the first two openly gay U.S. male athletes at Winter Olympics, they changed perceptions at the Olympics but, more importantly, back home. Think about this: NBC showed Kenworthy kissing his boyfriend on live, prime-time TV.

Loser: Mike Pence

The Vice President, who once walked out of an NFL stadium because people weren’t standing as a sign of respect, refused to stand when a unified Korea team historically marched into the stadium at the opening ceremony. Then he picked a Twitter fight with Rippon that he couldn’t possibly win. Then Kenworthy posted a picture of him with his arm around Rippon at the opening ceremony with the message: “Eat your heart out, Pence.”

Winner: Canada

Breaks its record for a Winter Olympics with 29 medals.

Loser: Canada

Doesn’t win gold in the only events it really cares about — men’s and women’s hockey, men’s and women’s curling — and then a ski cross athlete and his coach get drunk, steal an idling car and drive it to the Athletes Village because they were “cold.”

Winner: U.S. snowboarders

Shaun White, Chloe Kim, Jamie Anderson and Red Gerard sweep the snowboard halfpipe and slopestyle events for the United States. In all, snowboarders are responsible for seven of Team USA’s 23 medals.

Loser: U.S. snowboarder

Eighteen-month-old allegations of sexual harassment come back to haunt White hours after he wins an unprecedented third gold when he dismisses them as “gossip.” He later apologizes for his choice of words. Too late. Ketchup out of the bottle. Legacy stained.

Winner: Kikkan Randall

The 35-year-old cross-country skier on her fifth Olympic team makes the most of the experience, winning gold in the sprint free relay when teammate Jessie Diggins passes favorites from Norway and Sweden in the final moments for the first U.S. women’s medal in the sport. The following afternoon, she is elected to the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes Commission. Said Randall, the only mother on the U.S. team: “I have so much passion and energy to put toward the Olympic movement, and it feels so good to have the athletes put their faith in me.”

Loser: Shani Davis

The 35-year-old speed skater on his fifth Olympic team loses a coin flip, per USOC rules, to luger Erin Hamlin to break a tie for U.S. flagbearer at the opening ceremony, then ruins her moment with a toxic tweet that references Black History Month. Then skips the ceremony.

Then, after not contending in either of his races, breaks IOC rules and refuses to exit through the media area (as all athletes are required) even after being told he could face repercussions. What should have been a celebration of an illustrious, barrier-breaking career became a pathetic example of someone unable to get out of his own way.

Winner: Ester Ledecka

Racing well down the start order when the course is typically slush, the 22-year-old from the Czech Republic won skiing’s super-G and then wore her goggles in the news conference because it was so unexpected that “I didn’t wear any makeup.” A week, she won the parallel giant slalom … on a snowboard, becoming the first person in 90 years to win gold in different sports at the same Winter Games. “It was quite tough,” she said, “to change myself into a snowboarder.”

Loser: U.S. skating

The women’s hockey team aside, not a good Games for Americans on skates. The men’s hockey team got smoked in pool play by Russia and went out in the quarterfinals. The previous worst finish in women’s figure skating, part of the Winter Games since 1908, was sixth place; the three U.S. women here were ninth, 10th and 11th. There was one medal in short track speed skating, and one in long track. The latter came in the women’s team pursuit, and here’s what it has come to for a once-storied program: Matched against the mighty Dutch in the semifinals, the Americans basically tanked by resting their fastest skater to save energy for the third-place race.

Winner: German Madrazo

The 43-year-old cross-country skier from Mexico finished dead last in the 15-kilometer race, a full minute behind the guy in 114th place and nearly 26 minutes behind gold medalist Dario Cologna of Switzerland. But he grabbed a huge Mexican flag and waved it proudly as he skied down the final stretch, then was lifted up by fellow competitors who had waited (patiently) at the finish line. One of those moments that make the Olympics the Olympics.

Loser: Elizabeth Swaney

The 33-year-old Cal grad who works in the Bay Area figured out a way to game the system in freestyle skiing’s halfpipe event, spanning the globe to enter small competitions where she could score enough qualifying points without, you know, being able to actually perform any tricks. She also figured out that Hungary didn’t have much of a ski team, and her grandparents were Hungarian. In Pyeongchang, she swished down the halfpipe without so much as a single jump. Blame Swaney. But also blame Hungary and FIS, the sport’s world governing body, for even letting her get that far.

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