Now that the Olympics are over, it’s time to reflect on the outcome and what they might mean in the future. Each country had its ups and downs, and they’ve all been greatly scrutinized. Most Americans only care about the Good Ol’ US of A, but other countries had greater individual victories, as well as defeats. “What are these victories and defeats?” You might ask. Well, that’s why I’m writing this. Here are my top four headlines from the Olympics:

US Struggles Away From Home

Simply put, we did not have a successful Olympics. Almost everyone around the world predicted the US to top the medal count, but we slipped to second place in total medals and five  behind Russia, and we didn’t even crack the top three in gold medals. In our defense, there is no way that we could have repeated our record-setting performance in Vancouver four years ago, where we won 37 total medals and nine gold. This year we won the same number of gold, but plummeted to just 28 total medals. While that is the most medals we’ve won in a Winter Olympics held outside of North America, it is still well below what was expected. Hopefully, this will just give us motivation to come back and rock the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Russia Soars on Home Soil

Russia clearly won the Olympics. They led in both total medals (33) and gold medals (13). This marks the first time that the host country won both the total medal and gold medal counts since Norway in the 1952 Winter Olympics. Russia dominated both figure skating and the short track, with a combined six gold, two silver, and two bronze in those events. Russia also had two competitors who defected from different countries. Viktor Ahn, from South Korea, won three golds and one bronze medal for Russia, while Vic Wild, from the US, won two golds for them. Some might say that is cheating, but maybe we should blame ourselves and South Korea for giving Russia such great athletes.

Germany Hits Rock Bottom

Germany used to be an Olympic powerhouse. Every country would fear Germany when it came time to compete. That is not the case anymore. Germany seemed to be making another strong case for their Olympic hopes. They won all four gold medals in the luge, but it all went downhill from there. They won just four more gold medals after that, and finished sixth in both the total medal and gold medal counts. This will be chalked up as Germany’s worst performance in any Olympics in 46 years. That means that 11 Winter Olympics and 12 Summer Olympics have passed since the Germans have performed this poorly. That doesn’t mean that they haven’t been lackluster in previous Olympics. It just means that they’ve hit a very low point in their Olympic history.

Netherlands Shocked the World

The Dutch were definitely the “Cinderella story” of the 2014 Winter Olympics. They won 23 (eight gold, seven silver, eight bronze) of the 36 total medals in speedskating. Speedskating accounted for all but one of their total medals, which was a bronze in short-track speedskating. Not only did they dominate speedskating, the Dutch had the lowest athlete/medal ratio at 1.7, much better than second-place Belarus at 4.0. All of those medals also contributed to the proud country tripling its medal count from Vancouver four years ago. Contributing to their medal spike was that they doubled their gold total and tripled their bronze, while also winning seven times as many silver medals. It’s amazing how one country can win so many more medals between consecutive Olympics, and we are just left to marvel in the accomplishment.

Well, that wraps up the Olympics. There were definitely winners and losers, as well as records set and records broken. It was an exciting two weeks, but now we sport fans have to find something else to fill the five ring-sized holes in our hearts. Now we can look forward to the Stanley Cup Playoffs and their new realignment, or we can follow the tight and surprising NBA conference races. Either way, it’s going to be a while until we forget these magical Olympic Games.