U.S. team far below medal expectations

The Pyeongchang Games are shaping up as a frustrating Winter Olympics for an American team that had hopes of ending up near the top of the medal table.

The biggest team in the Olympics — 241 athletes — has been a flop so far, winning so few medals that you can count them on both hands. Take away the new wave of snowboarding events, and you can count them with one hand.

And consider this stunning statistic: Norway, a nation of 5.3 million people, is leading with 26 medals so far, or one for every 204,000 Norwegians. The U.S., a nation of some 320 million people, has 10 medals — one for every 32 million Americans. Perhaps the defining moment for the U.S. team at these Olympics came on Friday when — within 20 seconds of each other — Nathan Chen skated his way out of medal contention and Mikaela Shiffrin faltered in the slalom, an event she was heavily favored to win. The ice dance competition wraps up with siblings Maia and Alex Shibutani among three medal-contending duos for the United States. A showdown for gold looms between Tessa Virtue-Scott Moir of Canada and Gabriella Papadakis-Guillaume Cizeron of France. “Ted, Lindsey, they’re getting older and every four years as a ski racer, that takes away a lot. It’s a good thing we have Mikaela, because she’s a strong skier. Besides that, we need to build a lot.” — Ryan Cochran-Siegle, 25, on the “interesting team dynamic” for the U.S. Alpine team, with older stars such as Ted Ligety, 37, and Lindsey Vonn, 33, along with younger skiers such as him and Mikaela Shiffrin, 22