Olympic zenith

So now that it's all over there in PyeongChang, what can we say, we Americans, about our proficiency in the Winter Olympics -- aka, Sports Norway Is Really Good At?

Well. We can say our figure skaters (especially our women figures skaters) kind of suck, 'cause they did.

But we can also say that, in addition to fast food, arming murdering psychopaths like Army Rangers and believing dopey conspiracy theories, we are the very best in the world at ... curling!

Yes, curling, that sport that looks like a cross between shuffleboard and scrubbing your bathroom floor with a Swiffter. A sport many, many Americans know nothing about except that every four years they see it on their TVs, say, "What's this? Looks boring", and then find themselves still watching it 45 minutes later. A sport at which Scandinavians, Canadians and various other frozen tundra types are usually dominant, prompting Americans to say "Pffft. It's curling. Who cares?"

Well ... we do now.

We do now because the American men won the gold medal in curling, upsetting the hugely favored Swedes, who will now have to console themselves with the fact they're still pretty darn good at the Nordic combined. Because at curling, we're the best. We're the kings of the curling mountain, wherever that is. (Best guess: Somewhere north of the Bering Sea.) Yes, sir. Nobody can beat us at sliding a polished rock toward a red circle while scrubbing the ice in front of it really hard with those scrubber thingies.

You can have Chloe Kim and Red Gerard and Mikaela Shiffrin and those two women who won gold in that cross-country relay, the first Olympic cross-country medal ever for America. Winning the curling gold was America's One Shining Moment for this Olympiad.

Why, if you close your eyes, you can almost see curling now supplanting pro football as America's National Pastime.

OK. So maybe not.