U.S. bobsledders reach end of 'craziest year'

On the day the Olympic cauldron was being extinguished in South Korea, the proverbial torch for USA Bobsled was being passed as well.

Steve Langton, probably the best push athlete in the program's history, took his last ride.

Jean Schaefer, the mother of the late three-time Olympic medalist driver Steven Holcomb, was in the coaches' box.

Big changes are coming to the U.S. team for the next quadrennial, both on the ice and off, but the final day of the Pyeongchang Olympics showed hope for the future. Olympic rookie Codie Bascue led the U.S. on Sunday with a ninth-place finish in the four-man competition, the last race of a year the likes of which no one associated with the American program will want to see ever again.

"This was the craziest year I've ever experienced in any sport," U.S. push athlete Carlo Valdes said. "There was Holcomb's passing in the beginning, then things kept piling up on us. There's so many things I don't want to remember, but I obviously can't forget."

Bascue doesn't want to forget.

"A ninth place, with everything we've gone through, I'm happy," said Bascue, who will need weeks to recover from a left leg injury that slowed him in Pyeongchang. "We gave it our all."

Either way, Langton leaves the U.S. program better than he found it 11 years ago.

"That's important to me," he said. "Making a difference, whether it's bobsled or just life in general, is very important to me."

Canadian skicross competitor Dave Duncan apologized for "poor judgment" for his role in taking a car after a night out at a bar and using it for a ride home to the Olympic village. He and two others were stopped by police after midnight Saturday near the village.

Duncan, 35, was released from jail after about eight hours, along with his wife, Maja Duncan, 32, and coach William Raine, 48.

Raine, who was allegedly driving the SUV, was fined 5 million South Korean won ($4,600) for driving under the influence and theft. Duncan and his wife were each fined 1 million won ($930).

Raine allegedly had a blood alcohol level of .162, well above the local legal driving limit of .05.

Sarah Murray, who coached the unified Korean women's hockey team, is only 29, and she's a hardened hockey lifer, the daughter of a former NHL coach and a two-time collegiate national champion while playing for Minnesota Duluth.

She was crying, and not because her team got outscored 28-2 in five games. She was happy, and proud.

"When I was put in charge of a unified team that was decided upon as a political statement just ahead of the Olympics, I didn't know how I was going to unite the team," Murray said. "But I treated the South and North Korean players equally, and the players were totally committed. The players were the real heroes."

Murray has been asked to dedicate at least two more years to improving the Korean hockey program. She has agreed to stay, but the team won't remain intact.

The forecast for the next Winter Olympics: cold with a 100 percent chance of fake snow.

In other words, a lot like the Olympics that just wrapped up.

Though freezing temperatures and windy conditions punctuated the action in Pyeongchang, between 90 and 98 percent of the snow at the ski and snowboard venues was man-made.

Climate data compiled since 1979 about winters in Beijing, where the Games will take place in four years, indicate the snow will be entirely man-made there.

Intertrust Technologies analyzed weather in Beijing and found there wasn't a single winter that produced "sufficient snow" — more than 13 feet — to set down the Alpine and snowboarding runs that will be used at the Olympics. But average temperatures are ideal for snow-making.

Its top four players all hail from the farming region of Uiseong, known for producing garlic, and all of them have the surname Kim, Korea's most common name. None of which mattered until …

The Garlic Girls started winning and didn't stop until they lost the gold medal match, to Sweden.

Their coach took their cellphones during the Games, and they didn't know until the crowds grew large at their matches how much attention they were getting.