With the current situation in Ukraine this post seems a little silly, but I don’t have anything to add to that discussion, other then to just shake my head at how as a species we behave.
With that out of the way, who won the 2014 Winter Olympics. The answer of course is which every country is at the top of the list when you rank countries on some scheme that gets your home country highest in the rankings. The answer in all cases I can think of is Russia. They had an amazing result at their home Olympics, which really can’t be diminished by any of the judging scandals. It was a big turn around for a nation that was looking for answers after the 2010 games in Vancouver.
Here is the ranking system I like the most. It assigns each medal a point value: Gold 3 points; Silver 2 points; Bronze 1 point. It rewards countries that had the most first place finishes and gives credit for those who made it to the podium. It also rewards countries that sweep the podium at an event, which there were several in this Olympics. Here are the results for the top few countries. Guess which is my home country! 🙂
Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | Points |
Russia | 13 | 11 | 9 | 33 | 70 |
Canada | 10 | 10 | 5 | 25 | 55 |
Norway | 11 | 5 | 10 | 26 | 53 |
USA | 9 | 7 | 12 | 28 | 53 |
Netherlands | 8 | 7 | 9 | 24 | 47 |
Germany | 8 | 6 | 5 | 19 | 41 |
Switzerland | 6 | 3 | 2 | 11 | 26 |