Categories: Need to know

Canada breaks Olympic gold record

14 golds in an Olympics where underdogs ruled, favourites faltered

by macleans.ca on Sunday, February 28, 2010 9:11pm - 7 Comments

After a stunning victory in the men’s hockey final, Canada walks into the closing ceremonies with a record-setting 14 gold medals—the most ever held by a single country at a Winter Olympics, not to mention the most ever held by Canada, or by a host country. The U.S. finishes the Games with the most medals at 37 and Germany comes in second with 30 overall.

CBC Olympics

Tags: Olympics

R Keller

Let's put this "most gold medals" stuff in perspective: according to Wikipedia, there were 86 events at Vancouver, and Canada won 14, or 16% of them. When Norway won 13 of 78 events in 2002, it won the same percentage. When the USSR won 13 golds in 1976, there were only 37 events at the Winter Olympics, so the USSR won over a third of the events.

We can be pleased and proud of our athletes without meaningless apples-to-oranges comparisons

john

True it is 14/86 or 13/78 but u fail to point out that the events are much more competitive now with so many nations competing at a much higher level….

Miromondo

But the competition and it's toughness didn't really change over past eight years. Just eight years. Things weren't that different in 2002. It's true, the record is in the books. But it's just a fancy number and after all unimportant – unless an OC that has gone nuts makes a competition for the most medals won. Just a little piece of information that indicates the tremendous success of our athletes, and that's what we should be of and not a number in the books that will be excelled in the near future when there are more than 90 or even 100 chances for the USA, Germany, Norway and Canada to score gold.

Doug Johnston

Yes, let's put things in to perspective shall we! Some events have single participants, while others have multiple participants (teams). Canada (and a few other countries like the USA) have a greater proportion of athletes participating in team events. The true measure of a county's athletic achievement is in the number of athletes winning medals. Canadian athletes won 91 medals, second only to the USA at 98 (USA has 10 times the population), and these two far more than any other country. Canada has 68 Gold Medal athletes in these games. That's 56 more than its closest competitor the USA. I'd say a very lopsided victory for Canada!

Miromondo

These rankings and records are completely useless because they cannot measure the real worth of the efforts since they don't take the number of competitions, the number of athletes, the number of athletes seeded by their nations and many other things (e.g. how the nations seed their athletes) into consideration . They are just nifty little indications for the good performances of the athletes. USA has set a new medal record, Canada a new gold medal record – but Germany has become the most successful nation in the history of the winter games (both USA and Canada won't reach this record in decades). Should Americans and Canadians feel ashamed now? Of course not. The athletes have shown amazing performances and served their nations very well, and that's all that counts.

Greg

Lets get it straight numbers don't lie. We still hold 14 gold medals, in our hands. 13 gold medals is one less, its not an percentage, its medals in hand. Maybe the U.S should wait another 30 yrs for a miracle on ice. They have to get through canada first, good luck!
Adam

Gold Canada Go…. The best of all is, WE Canadians have a wonderful times and enjoy the best moment of all together. All athletes are working so hard. 14 gold medals and break the records and Hockey Gold….. Yea……