Wow! That was a great two weeks of international sport competition! If you didn't follow along on our Facebook page you can still check out all of the interesting trivia we shared about the Olympics. Norway was the overall medal winner with 39 (14 golds, 14 silvers, and 11 bronzes) and the United States finished in fourth place with 23 (9 golds, eight silvers, and 6 bronzes). Many people have lamented this as a poor showing, and indeed we were down by five medals from the Sochi games, but 23 is nothing to sneer at. We also finished fourth in Sochi and this Olympics there were 30 different countries who won a medal (which according to NBC was a record high). South Korea benefited from the often mentioned home team boost, winning 17 medals this year to finish in sixth place, up from 8 that they won in Sochi.
If you are wondering why the United States doesn't dominate the Winter Olympics the way they do in the Summer Games, imagine what the US medal total would be like if we didn't perform well in swimming and/or track and field. These are the two sports with the largest number of medals available and we are equally strong with both our men's and women's programs. The sports with the most medals up for grabs in the Winter Olympics are cross country skiing, speed skating and short track speed skating. In previous years the US has down very well in both speed skating disciplines, but that hasn't been the case in the last two Olympics. Also, the gold medal won in cross country skiing was only the second cross country skiing medal the US has ever won. If the US wants to get back on top of the medal count they will need to improve in at least one of these sports. But honestly, aside for some bragging rights, the overall medals race isn't even official. The IOC does not keep a total of how many medals each country has won.
What should we fill the void in our free time left by the Olympics ending? The Academy Awards are this weekend (March 4th) and the nominated films are all starting to appear on dvd. We already own Get Out, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri and Darkest Hour go on sale tomorrow, Lady Bird goes on sale on March 6th, The Shape of Water and Call Me By Your Name go on sale on March 13th and the Phantom Thread goes on sale on April 10th. I am unable to find any release date information on The Post and Dunkirk currently is only available on Blu Ray (which the college currently does not support). There is also no information on the release date for Coco (the forerunner for Best Animated Feature), but we do already own Loving Vincent, and the Breadwinner and Ferdinand are both being released in March. The final Animated Feature nominee, The Boss Baby, is already out, and will be purchased at the start of the month.
Finally, on March 20th the library will be offering a program on the database Heritage Quest which is a free genealogy database brought to us by NCLIVE. The program will be held twice, first at 10 and then again at 2. Because this database is an NCLIVE resource the program is open to the community as well, since they can use their public library card to access the resource. If you don't have a public library card I highly recommend you get one. You never know when it will come in handy. We hope you will join us on the 20th to learn about this fabulous resource and how to get started exploring your family's history.
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