One last observation...

The Russian sports federation wants a complete makeover of their Olympic training for athletes. This makes sense because the US did this in the late '90's and look at the result.

When we (the US) stopped going to Olympics with true "amateurs" and started having professionals in their sports go we started winning gold medals. I'm talking about letting these athletes get paid endorsement money for training etc. Do you think Apolo Ohno would have stayed around short track for as long as he did without $? He and all the snowboarders, skiers, bobsledders, etc. get corporate money so they can devote their time to training.

This Olympics showed the world that us in North America are truly superior athletes when the table is truly even. Just think back to the days of the Soviet Bloc nations winning everything. Well during those times their sport was their job. They got paid for doing it. Now we do the same thing, and we are winning medals at a record pace. We didn't have the most gold medals but where we made up for that was in the depth of talent in each sport. We had several medal hopefuls going in everything!

Great coaching + Great athletes + financial backing = Olympic Medals