Story by Hayleigh Syens
The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics ended on Sunday with the Closing Ceremonies.
This year’s Olympics were full of problems, and the U.S. failed to bring home gold medals in many events.
Unlike the rest of the country, many students at Drake University did not watch the Olympics.
“I didn’t have any time to watch the Olympics this year,” said freshman Kylie Thompson.
“I was too busy doing homework to really watch this year,” said sophomore Chrissy Bono. “I watched maybe two ice-skating routines on YouTube.”
“I’m not really that interested in the winter Olympics, so I didn’t watch. I don’t really get all of the hype,” said sophomore Danielle Day.
Despite not watching the actual events, students still heard about all that went wrong in Sochi during the Olympics.
“Even though I didn’t watch, I still heard about the issue with the Olympic rings during the Opening Ceremonies,” Thompson said.
During the Opening Ceremonies, one of the five Olympic rings failed to open and interlock with the other four.
The iconic image of the five rings all overlapping each other was then absent on a large scale during the Opening Ceremonies.
“Seeing as how many complaints there were, I don’t really think Sochi was a great place to have the Olympics,” Bono said. “I heard that there were more #sochiprobz tweets than actual tweets about the Olympics.”
Journalists covering the Olympics in Sochi faced such problems as lack of hotel rooms, yellow water and getting accidentally locked into bathroom stalls.
Not all students felt that the Olympics in Sochi were a failure, though.
“I was surprised with how well everything went in Sochi, especially with all of the political stuff going on,” said sophomore Morgan Dezenski. “I know the snow was not in the best condition, but it still went fairly well.”
“I thought the Olympics were successful,” said freshman Allison Kuhlmann. “I enjoyed watching them. I thought the U.S. did well.”
The U.S. finished the Sochi Olympics with nine gold medals, seven silver medals and 12 bronze medals.
This was nine fewer medals than the U.S. won in Vancouver.
The U.S. was fourth place in gold medal count. Russia was first, followed by Norway and Canada.
Big disappointments included Shaun White placing fourth in men’s snowboard halfpipe, both the men’s and women’s ice hockey teams failing to take home a gold medal, and the U.S. failing to medal at all in long-track speedskating for the first time since 1984.
