Team USA's Gold Is Sweeter For The Struggle | Defector

"Skimo, for example, a new event that dared to ask the question "why not ski up the mountain?", was designed specifically for Europeans who can't get to work by bus. For the U.S., the tensest Winter Olympics moments matter because the margins of victory are simply not sufficiently wide or sufficiently plentiful to allow for much in the way of jingoistic preening."

"They boatraced the field for the first six of their seven games by a combined score of 31-1, with the lone opposition goal scored by Czechia forward and future trivia answer Barbora Jurickova in the U.S.'s introductory 5-1 win. The American women outshot the Czechs, Finns, Swiss, Canadians (who were missing their best player Marie-Philip Poulin at the time), Italians, and Swedes by a combined 259-95."

The U.S. women's Olympic hockey team dominated early play with overwhelming scores but lacked memorable drama. A late tying goal by Hilary Knight and Megan Keller's overtime winner against Canada transformed a likely facile gold into a historically resonant victory. America's Winter Olympics experience depends more on tense, narrow outcomes because the United States is not dominant in many winter events. New events like skimo favor Europeans. The American women outshot opponents 259-95 and trounced most rivals 31-1 over six games, yet those clinical performances felt emotionally flat until the dramatic Canadian final gave the win lasting significance.

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