XI Olympic Winter Games, Sapporo 1972

The Internet Is Amazing™, really. I don't know how it took me this long, but I just came across Sports-Reference.com's Olympic Sports site. And I am disappointed to discover the following:

We are sorry to inform you that due to a change to our data licensing agreement we are shutting down our Olympic site sometime in the future..  

The providers of our dataset are working with another publisher to create an extensive site chronicling the history of the Olympic Movement. We will provide information here when that site is available. 

But I am heartened to read that was posted Dec. 16, 2016, so I'm hopeful plans changed or something.

In any event, for however long it is available, this site looks very good. I ran across it after being charmed by the floppy plastic "FINISH" sign and nearby traffic in the background of the following YouTube discovery:

Our new rings-head friends at Sports-Reference.com have an excellent and detailed report on this race, which begins thusly: "The cross-country relay was expected to be a close duel between defending Olympic Champion Norway and the reigning 1970 World Champion, the Soviet Union ..." Spoiler alert: Americans Tim Caldwell of Brattleboro, Vermont; Mike Gallagher of Yonkers, New York; Larry Martin of Glennallen, Alaska, and Mike Elliott of Durango, Colorado, finished 12th.

Here’s how the overall medal standings came out at Sapporo 1972:

1. Soviet Union 8 gold, 5 silver, 3 bronze

2. East Germany 4, 3, 7

3. Switzerland 4, 3, 3

4. Netherlands 4, 3, 2

5. United States 3, 2, 3

6. West Germany 3, 1, 1

7. Norway 2, 5, 5
8. Italy 2, 2, 1

9. Austria 1, 2, 2

10. Sweden 1, 1, 2

11. Japan 1, 1, 1

12. Czechoslovakia 1, 0, 2

13. Poland 1, 0, 0

14. Spain 1, 0, 0

15. Finland 0, 4, 1

16. France 0, 1, 2

17. Canada 0, 1, 0

And by the same sorting (golds, then silvers, then bronzes), here were the winners by sport at these games: alpine skiing, Switzerland; biathlon, Norway and Soviet Union; bobsleigh, West Germany; cross-country skiing, Soviet Union; figure skating, Soviet Union; ice hockey, Soviet Union; luge, East Germany; Nordic combined, East Germany; ski jumping, Japan, and speed skating, Netherlands.

But, of course, our old friends at Wikipedia note:

The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis.[24] Nevertheless, the IOC held to the traditional rules regarding amateurism.

#SMH ... upon further review, congratulations, Switzerland.

Previous reports:

-- I Olympic Winter Games, Chamonix 1924
-- II Olympic Winter Games, Saint Moritz 1928
-- VIII Olympic Winter Games, Squaw Valley 1960
-- XII Olympic Winter Games, Innsbruck 1976 
-- XVII Olympic Winter Games, Lillehammer 1994
-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014
-- XXIII Olympic Winter Games, Pyeongchang 2018