Germany's slightly below par Olympic performance

German biathlete Philipp Horn showed up with a cardboard medal with the writing "winner of the hearts" after the mass start race in which he came fourth.

Fourth place is known in the German language as tin medal, and a record number of more than a dozen of these placings contributed to the team missing the target of finishing in the top three of the medal table.

"It hurts because it was somewhere between drama and tragedy," German team chef de mission Olaf Tabor said.

He spoke slightly diplomatically about "joy, pride and a little bit of disillusionment" about the final haul of eight gold, 10 silver and eight bronze.

Fewer golds than in 2022

Norway dominated more than ever with a record 18 golds and 41 medals overall, with the United States, the Netherlands and hosts Italy also ahead of Germany.

Tabor suggested that "other nations "are clearly more careful with their medal potential and, where there are opportunities, are more likely to convert them into precious metal."

Olympic chiefs were at least happy that the overall 26 medals all but matched the 27 from Beijing 2022 but the number of golds dropped by four from 12 to eight and the plunge from second to fifth.

Sliders deliver again

The majority of medals were again won in the sliding track from bobsleigh, luge and skeleton - 19 medals and six of them gold. In 2022 it was 16 medals and nine gold.

"If you leave out the sliding centre and look at the medal table then we are simply no factor any more internationally," former alpine skier Felix Neureuther said as TV pundit.

Different views

Neureuther named the situation "alarming" but Tabor rather said that ‘it's reassuring to know that we have a domain with the sliders."

After all, the Dutch won all their 10 golds and 20 medals in speed skating and short track, and French got six of their eight golds and 13 of their 23 medals from the biathlon team.

Even Norway got half their medals from Nordic skiing, with Johannes Høsflot Klæbo sweeping the six cross country races and Jens Lurås Oftebro all three Nordic combined races.

Golds and near misses

German sliders got double gold from bobsledder Johannes Lochner and two golds each from luge sliders Julia Taubitz and Max Langenhan in the individual events and mixed relay. Laura Nolte got back-to-back two-woman bob gold.

The remaining golds came from ski cross Daniela Maier and ski jumper Philipp Raimund.

It could have been more but Nolte missed monobob gold by four-hundredths and alpine skier Emma Aicher missed downhill and team combined gold by a combined nine-hundredths.

Fourth place agony and real drama

The fourth places saw the ski jumping super team miss bronze by 16 centimetres and bobsledder Adam Ammour a four-man bronze by four-hundredths in some very near podium misses.

But there was also skier Lena Dürr who straddled the first gate of the slalom after lying second in the first run and also missed a medal in the giant slalom after being placed second.

Nordic combined skier Vinzenz Geiger lost a team sprint medal by falling twice, two snowboard cross athletes took each other out, and biathlon heroine Franziska Preuss struggled in the shooting range and had to settle for mixed relay bronze. The biathlon team alone had to swallow four fourth-place finishes in its worst showing in decades.

"The public is probably not amazingly happy with the medal table but that has nothing to do with what our athletes have invested," said former football coaching great Jürgen Klopp said during a visit to the Games.

Hope that reform brings back success

Tabor said that talks with the sports federations will start in a few weeks and there are hopes in a reform of high performance sport in Germany which was started after the worst summer Games performance 2024 in Paris since reunification in 1990.

It remains to be seen whether the reform will pass parliament before summer and its full effect is not expected until in a few years.

Neureuther has no illusions, saying: "We don't have structures anymore in Germany to be successful on the international stage.

"I can already predict that the next low point will be reached at the 2030 Winter Games in France," he added to the Bild am Sonntag paper.