Four years worth of work from hundreds of the nation’s best athletes is whittled down into two-and-a-half weeks, then later cemented as a thumbs-up or thumbs-down kind of Olympics. These 2018 Olympic Winter Games are somewhere in the middle and will be remembered as such. That’s being somewhat generous, too.
Team USA stormed into these Games with its largest athlete delegation in the history of the Winter Olympiad with 244 Americans vying for medals. They had the names, the profiles, the breakout stars — on paper. But only a few established names delivered, several high-profile athletes underachieved and those marketed breakout stars never busted out.