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Extreme Sports Helping Carry Team USA's Overall Results At Games

Chloe Kim's Gold Medal in women's halfpipe is just one of four Golds for the U.S. in snowboardingGETTY IMAGES

Americans "slow to get aboard the extreme sports bandwagon might want to look around at what’s happening" at the Pyeongchang Games, as many young athletes have "gravitated toward fancy tricks and dangerous flips, and they’re bringing home plenty of medals to show for it once again," according to Dan Wolken of USA TODAY. Team USA has become "increasingly irrelevant in speedskating, struggled on the Alpine runs and unable to break through in cross-country." Meanwhile, Americans have "not only performed well in the more progressive sports, but frankly, they’re pretty much propping up the entire Team USA effort here." Of the 12 medals Team USA has won so far, seven have been won in "non-traditional sports, including four of the five American golds." That count could "become even more lopsided on Thursday" after the men's ski halfpipe. The addition of extreme events is "basically an arranged marriage," as they "draw in the younger viewers that NBC craves." The athletes get a "massive platform to take their sports mainstream and potentially earn big sponsorship dollars, but there are always complaints about selling out ... and, often, sub-standard conditions for competition." These U.S. Olympians "don’t merely deserve more respect, they deserve to be embraced." This is "probably the future" of where top U.S. Winter Olympic athletes are "going to come from" (USA TODAY, 2/20). YAHOO SPORTS' Travis Mewhirter writes there seems to be "one discipline in which the United States is consistently medaling: X Games events." Snowboarding made its Olympic debut at the '98 Nagano Games, and in its "brief time on the Olympic schedule, the Americans have won double the medals of any other country, producing exponentially more star power." While Team USA falls "further and further behind in the overall medal count ... they do lead in one category: snowboarding." Their four gold medals are "more than any other country’s total of any color of medal" (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 2/20).

ROUGH GAMES FOR U.S.: In Denver, Mark Kiszla writes Pyeongchang is becoming the "Grumpy Games" for Team USA. There have been "too many excuses" and "not enough winning." Skier Mikaela Shiffrin is "experiencing the backlash of being built up as the next Olympic hero, only to be bitten by the hype" after scoring just one Gold Medal so far and dropping out of two other events. Almost everywhere in PyeongChang, there are U.S. athletes "feeling the strain of under-achieving at these Games" (DENVER POST, 2/20). The GLOBE & MAIL's Cathal Kelly writes the U.S. is "having a bad Olympics." Kelly: "Medals aren't the major problem here. It's the impression left. The one America's making has little to do with sport, and it is largely poor." Many of the stars who were "supposed to thrive based the formula (Medals)+(Q rating)=(Interest) have fallen flat." Additionally, while there are plenty of American spectators in Pyeongchang, they are "quieter than at Games past." There are "plenty of national colours" seen around Pyeongchang, but the "red-white-and-blue is rarely one of them" (GLOBE & MAIL, 2/20).

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