Colorado Wins More 2018 Winter Olympics Medals Than 78 Countries

Editor's note: Shortly after the publication of the following post, a reader informed us that we'd inadvertently overlooked one Colorado medalist: Kyle Mack of Silverthorne, who earned silver in the Big Air competition. We've corrected and updated the information below. Our apologies for the error.

In the first few days after the start of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, we shared a post headlined "Colorado's Won More 2018 Winter Olympic Medals Than 81 Countries" to celebrate the achievements of the state's first two medalists, snowboarders Red Gerard and Arielle Gold. In the days that followed, plenty of other athletes from these parts competed in various disciplines, and while critics expressed disappointment with the performance of the U.S. Olympic team overall, Coloradans still managed to collect ten medals, more than 78 of the nations that took part.

The U.S. Olympics team finished fourth in the country count, with 23 medals: nine gold, eight silver, six bronze. That's the smallest medal haul in a Winter Olympics since 1998 — and without Colorado's contributions, it would have been much, much grimmer.

Coloradans will be bringing home medals in eight individual events: two for skier Mikaela Shiffrin and one apiece for Gerard, Gold, freestyle skier Alex Ferreira, alpine skier Lindsey Vonn, Big Air specialist Kyle Mack and figure skater Mirai Nagasu.

We failed to include Mack and Nagasu in our Colorado men and Colorado women competing in the 2018 games because their affiliations with the state aren't listed on the Team USA website. But Mack currently resides in Silverthorne, and Nagasu has trained, worked and lived here for the past couple of years, taking classes at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and even serving as an "ice girl" for the Colorado Avalanche during the 2015-16 season.

In addition, two Coloradans earned medals in multi-member events: Lauren Gibbs was part of the silver-medal-winning two-person women's bobsled duo and goalie Nicole Hensley was on the gold-medal-winning women's hockey squad.

Medal-wise, then, Colorado trailed only Norway (39 medals), Germany (31), Canada (29), the U.S., the Netherlands (20), South Korea (17), Olympic Athletes from Russia (17), Switzerland (15), France (15), Sweden (14), Austria (14) and Japan (13), and tied with Italy, which also notched ten.

As for the countries with fewer medals than Colorado, there are a lot of them. They're listed below in alphabetical order, with the roster interspersed by interview clips with victorious Colorado athletes.


A
Albania
Andorra
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Azerbaijan

B
Belarus
Belgium
Bermuda
Bolivia
Bosnia
Brazil
Bulgaria

C
Chile
China
Colombia
Croatia
Cyprus

D
Denmark

E
Ecuador
Eritrea
Estonia


G
Georgia
Ghana
Great Britain
Greece

H
Hong Kong
Hungary

I
Iceland
India
Iran
Ireland
Israel

J
Jamaica

K
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Korea
Kosovo
Kyrgyzstan

L
Latvia
Lebanon
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg