LAST WORD FROM VANCOUVER

The 2010 Winter Olympics are over. I don't know whether they were the best games ever or the worst games ever - both epithets have been used - but I enjoyed them. I think the time zone helped, since it meant you could watch things live in the evening. They certainly cheered up an otherwise chilly European winter.

A look at the final medals table is interesting. Canada, with home field advantage, won, followed by Germany and the U.S.A. No surprises there. They came mainly on the negative side, with Austria failing to get a single men's alpine skiing medal, and Russia posting their worst result ever, with just three gold medals. With the next games due to be held in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014, rumours abound that current Russian sports officials are for the chop.

Some countries are good at only one thing. The Netherlands got 7 of their 8 medals in long-track speed skating, but are crap at the short-track variety. The masters of that, on the other hand, are South Korea, with 8 of their 14 medals in the sport.

But the most perplexing result of all is that of Norway, a small country of less than 5 million people, that got the fourth largest medal haul. Yes, it is a cold, northern land, but how come they always do so much better than their neighbours Sweden or Finland? Norway have in fact the best overall record at the Winter Olympics, well ahead of the U.S. and twice as good as Canada. It must be something in the diet.

Finally, hats off to some great individual performances. Simon Ammann of Switzerland doing the double in ski-jumping to match his double in Salt Lake City in 2002; Marit Bjoergen of Norway winning 3 golds, a silver and a bronze in cross-country skiing; Andre Lange of Germany taking gold in the 2-man bob for the third time in a row; Lindsey Vonn of the U.S. winning the women's downhill under intense pressure; and finally the great Ole Einar Bjoerndalen of Norway winning his sixth Olympic gold medal in the biathlon at the age of 36.

Walter Blotscher