The previous record-holder? Also Norway … at the last Winter Olympics.

The record holder before that … also Norway … at the Winter Olympics before that. (To be fair, they were tied with Germany and Canada.)

They’re currently at 37 total medals, leaving them just two away from matching the record of 39, held by … you guessed it … LIECHTENSTEIN!!!!!! (Just kidding. Also Norway.)

(Actually, by the time you read this, they’ve already hit 39. That’s right — the bottom of this post ONCE AGAIN features previews of events that have already happened. Some of them are VERY wrong!)

Norway has won the most medals at 10 of the 25 Winter Olympics in history. They have the most all-time golds and the most all-time total medals of any nation.

The Winter Olympics are clearly designed to benefit Norway. Cross-country skiing is one of the most popular sports there, and there are 12 cross-country skiing events at the Winter Olympics, many of which are pretty similar to one another.

Then there’s biathlon, which is cross-country skiing with a shooting element for another 11 potential gold medals.

Then there’s Nordic Combined, which is cross-country skiing with a ski jumping element. (And is literally called “the NORDIC Combined.” THAT’S YOU! YOU’RE NORD.)

Individual athletes can rack up medals in those sports in a way they can’t in, say, hockey or figure skating. It’s much easier for competitors to win medals at multiple cross-country distances than it would be for someone to win at, say, different types of Alpine skiing (like downhill and slalom) or snowboarding (like halfpipe and big air.)

The four Winter Olympians with at least eight Olympic gold medals (Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, Marit Bjørgen, and Bjørn Dæhlie) all competed in cross-country or biathlon, and are all Norwegian.

Cross-country adjacent events account for 26 of 116 Winter Olympic medals at these games. Norway has dominated them, winning 11 golds in those events. That alone would be good enough to top the medal table, with Team USA currently in second at 10 golds.

It is, as previously mentioned, cold there. I wasn’t making that part up.

Norway has actually done a pretty good job diversifying its Winter Olympic medals. They’re not all from cross-country! At these Olympics, they’ve won gold in speed skating, freestyle skiing events (big air and slopestyle), and ski jumping (twice), plus a silver and bronze in Alpine skiing.

Yes, it’s cold there. But it’s cold in lots of places! It’s cold in Russia, which is also many, many times larger than Norway, but hasn’t recorded more golds than Norway at a Winter olympics since 1994. It’s cold in Sweden, which is twice as large as Norway, and consistently wins fewer medals.

Heck. It’s cold in Minnesota and Wisconsin, both of which have larger populations than Norway, and both of which are inside a much, much, larger country that still has fewer medals than Norway.

And while Norway isn’t dominant at the Summer Olympics, they punch above their weight class.They won the gold medal in beach volleyball in Tokyo! What’s more Not Cold than beach volleyball! In 2024, they won the men’s decathlon and the women’s handball tournament.

And they’ve just generally produced a ton of high-level athletes in sports you wouldn’t expect: The Norwegian men’s soccer team is qualified for the upcoming World Cup, and the women’s team has actually won it. Erling Haaland is one of the best soccer players on the planet. Just this past week, Bodø/Glimt, a team whose roster is primarily Norwegian, beat Inter Milan. (Damn. People from Milan must be SICK of the Dutch.) In other sports, Casper Ruud has made multiple Grand Slam finals, while Victor Hovland has finished Top 10 at every golf major.

(Are we counting chess as a sport? Sound off below.)

You just wouldn’t expect 5.6 million people to be that good at so many sports. That’s the size of South Carolina! If South Carolina had multiple 2024 gold medalists, top-10 tennis players and golfers, and the best player on the US men’s national soccer team, we’d be like, “Damn South Carolina, great job!” And that’s without even getting into being a winter sports powerhouse! But, you know, they don’t. (Although they do have A’ja Wilson, which is pretty good.)

Ughhhhhhhh Finland blew it.

The Finns went up 2-0 on Canada, but the Canadians won on a Nathan MacKinnon goal with 35 seconds left.

The power play lineup that scored the winning goal had Connor MacDavid, MacKinnon, and Macklin Celebrini — #1, #2, and #4 in the NHL in points this season. That’s mean, and it’s what the Olympics are all about.

But despite all that firepower, Canada has trailed in back-to-back elimination games and escaped by the skin of their teeth.

Meanwhile, Team USA put up 6 on Slovakia. (Slovakia blocked the extra point and returned it for two.)

Tomorrow. USA-Canada for gold.

Bright and early, 8 a.m. Eastern. See you then.

Really? You’re going to ask me to analyze this biathlon event? After I just spent the ENTIRE TOP OF THE POST analyzing this biathlon event, kinda? Sheesh.

OK, fine. This was, quite literally, the best performance of Dale-Skjevdal’s career. He shot 20/20 for his first time ever, and was the only competitor to shoot clean.

Five medals in five events for Lægreid. And four totally normal post-race press conferences! So I guess he shot 4-for-5 on those, which means he needs to take a penalty loop.

Also, a very fun moment at the end of this race: The last three athletes on the course skied up to the final stretch together, paused briefly to line up alongside each other, then sprinted from a stop all the way to the finish as the crowd went nuts. Team USA’s Campbell Wright lost the photo finish, but what a great moment for those three Olympians.

Just a really brutal Olympics for Brittany Bowe. She finished fourth in this event, the 1000m, and the team pursuit. I wonder what the record is for the most fourth-place finishes in one Olympics.

Still, not a bad career for Bowe, who is retiring after this season: Four Olympic games, two Olympic medals, two World Championships, a world record, and, of course, the opportunity to meet and fall in love with one of the greatest American Winter Olympians ever. Not bad for a basketball player from Ocala, Florida.

BTW, I’m done getting mad at Norway for being Good At The Winter Olympics. I’m saving it all for the Dutch for being good at speed skating.

Ferreira crushed his final run to win gold. It’s so sick when somebody crushes their final run to win gold.

Gonna be honest. I felt like one of the bad guys when I found myself rooting for Team USA to knock Estonia out of first place.

Estonia hadn’t won a Winter Olympic gold since 2006! Team USA won two yesterday! Am I a monster?

None of us think we would become Duke basketball fans. Yet here I am, thinking and talking like a Duke basketball fan. Do the conditions for Duke basketball fandom exist inside us all?

Then again, Estonia hadn’t won an Winter Olympic medal of any color since 2010. Hell yeah! They got silver! I bet they’re happy with that.

Damn. I really am a monster.

I’ll start with the good news. A few days ago, Stoddard posted a devastating Instagram post about how “embarrassed” she was by her performance at these Olympics. But in this race, Stoddard won a bronze medal!

She’s the only American to medal in short track at these games, and the first since 2018. She’s also the first American ever to medal in this event, at any Olympics. Hell yeah!

However: The defining story of short track at these Olympics was the bad ice, which caused many athletes to stumble and fall. (Stoddard didn’t point fingers, but her IG post does mention that “I’m not an athlete who’s known for falling often.”)

Friday was the worst day of all. The temperature was in the 60s in Milan, and the ice didn’t hold up. Athletes were slipping left and right. While I was watching, the crew members had to repair a hole in the ice.

And there was a big crash in this race that led to American Kristen Santos-Griswold’s skate slicing the face of Poland’s Kamila Sellier. The blade cut Sellier just above the eye, and the race had to be paused while she received medical attention on the ice. Luckily, the eye appears to be OK.

There’s a video of the crash. I don’t recommend watching it. No joke, I got a couple of hours of sleep last night and had a dream that featured something like a graphic recreation of this incident.

Gotta admit. That really sucked. I’m getting like 3-4 hours of sleep per night to get this newsletter out every day … and then that sleep gets interrupted by more Olympics? Specifically, the worst thing I’ve seen at the entire Olympics? What the hell, brain?

Danny-Fanny-Sanny podium. Incredible.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to compete in an Olympic ski race, NBC posted footage from Näslund’s POV camera. Pretty cool!

(Although probably worse than the drone footage we’ve been getting from all the other races …)

Näslund was so close to winning here — tenths of a second. What if the camera slowed her down?

FIFTY KILOMETERS. SHEESH. THAT IS SO MANY KILOMETERS.

This race is slightly longer than a marathon (42 km) and takes about two hours.

The big question is: Can Johannes Høsflot Klæbo make Olympic history by going 6-for-6 at these Olympics?

Obviously, he’s the heavy favorite. But if I were to have picked one race for Klæbo to lose at these Olympics, it would be this one. Klæbo has only won the 50k once at the World Championships (last year), and needed a sprint at the line after 50 kilometers to do it. He DNF’ed at the 2022 Olympics (when the race was shortened to 30 km due to brutally cold conditions) and was DQ’ed at the 2021 World Championships for boxing out another racer at the finish. This race isn’t held as often as the shorter formats, so it’s not like we’ve seen him win it dozens of times per year like we have in all the other races.

I’m gonna get up early to watch. No matter what, it’s gonna be history.

I don’t know why I’m putting so much effort into writing up this preview. I know there’s no way in hell I’m publishing this newsletter before 5 a.m. tomorrow. What am I thinking here.

Team USA are the defending gold medalists and World Champs …

… but I’m not loving their chances of winning gold. They didn’t have any Top-4 finishers in either the men’s or women’s individual events, and they’re without defending World Champion Quinn Dehlinger, who suffered a knee injury in training.

China won gold and bronze in both the men’s and women’s competitions, so it would be kinda nuts if they didn’t win gold.

But few nations have strong male and female contenders, so Team USA definitely have a shot at a medal. Judging by the way everybody finished in the individual events, I’d slot them in for bronze behind China and Switzerland.

Weird format: Two men and one woman per team. Team USA would be in better position if the format allowed two men and two women per team! What are we doing? Why are we doing a “mixed” team event that doesn’t even have gender equality?

I love this matchup. Mouat is the best curler in the world, and the reigning World Champ …

But they lost to Canada, 9-5, earlier in this tournament, and I think everybody would just generally go nuts if the Canadians won after The Great Curling Scandal.

Medal chance for Team USA after the first two runs. Kaillie Humphries and Jasmine Jones are in third place, .23 seconds back of the leaders.

BTW, that’s not the same Jasmine Jones who won a silver in the 400m hurdles at last year’s Track and Field World Championships. Although that’s one of the events that you might compete in before becoming a push athlete in the bobsled, funny enough. Anyway, this Jasmine Jones is in the Air Force.

Germany is in first, second, and fourth place, so she might be the best hope against a podium sweep, too.

Looks like this will be the first-ever Olympic event in which American Superhero Elana Meyers Taylor will not end up on the podium — she’s in 12th place, more than a second back. Whatever, she’s earned it!

There were no Americans in the women’s ski cross race yesterday. And there are no Americans in this, either! Folks, we need to start ski crossing! This is a national tragedy!

I looked it up and I think Team USA has competitors in 110 of 116 events at the Olympics. I’ve identified two and am trying to find the other four. Let me know if you find one!

SKI-MO! SKI-MO! SKI-MO!

The mixed relay has one man and one woman per team, each doing two laps of the course. So there’s a lot more time for someone to make up for their bad ski-application and/or ski-removal skills.

I think the pick for gold here is Team Spain, which won gold in the men’s event and bronze in the women’s. If they do it, Spain will have won more gold medals at these Olympics than they did in every other Winter Olympics combined!

Final biathlon event of the Olympics, and I think I’m getting good at previewing them.

Here goes: The people who won in the past events will probably win in this event …

Specifically, whichever one of them doesn’t miss a shot in this event.

Which one will that be? Tune in to find out!

Time for one of the weirdest-looking events of the Olympics! 16 skaters on the speed skating ice at the same time. So silly-looking.

The event gives points for crossing the line at various intervals (4 laps, 8 laps, 12 laps) but don’t worry about that — the person who crosses the line first wins the gold medal.

Team USA has a surprise gold medal contender in this event — Mia Manganello, who just won the season-long World Cup title in the mass start. She medaled in all four World Cup races this year and won one — a stunning season from the 36-year old, who had literally never podiumed in any World Cup race in her entire career and then did it over and over again this season. She’s retiring after this year. Maybe she shouldn’t!!!!

Final race for Jordan Stolz at these Olympics. He’s not the favorite, though: The mass start is way, way, way, way longer than his other races at 6,400 meters, and he won gold in the 500 and 1,000 but petered out in the 1,500.

But! It’s also the only long-track event when you’re competing against other skaters rather than the clock, so sprinters have a shot along with the distance skaters. And are so many skaters on the course that you can draft, and presumably Stolz’s teammates can help him out a bit. He won the most recent World Cup race and certainly can win gold.

This is Eileen Gu’s best event; she has won the last five World Cup halfpipe events she has competed in. Another day, another opportunity for me to Not Have An Opinion About Eileen Gu!

Gu fell in qualifying. Not enough to keep her out of the final, but still: off-putting.

A potential threat: Australia’s Indra Brown, who turned 16 last month. She won her first World Cup event in January in a competition where Gu wasn’t participating.