Beeeeeepppp! The buzzer goes off and you fly through the starting gate. Then you soar around the turns and bends of the beautiful course.

Along the way, you hear people of different languages, cultures, and races screaming your name. Next, you gather all your energy coming into the final turn. You can feel the finish line, and all your dreams inching closer and closer.

Finally, with all your might you take your last few strokes and triumphantly cross the line. You look up and see your name plastered across the jumbo-tron as number one. Then, draped in your countries flag, you drop to your knees out of pure pride for yourself and your county.

You have just realized that your dreams have come true; you are an Olympic champion. People say that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, but within the two weeks that the Olympics take place, such an event is a very common occurrence. In fact, it happens almost every hour of every day.

A total of eighty-eight nations gathered this year for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the summer resort town of Sochi, Russia. As a result of world strife right now, the Olympics were surrounded by a lot of controversy. This included pressure to perform in front of the world, pressure to win Olympic gold, and much more.

But the biggest question that has been surrounding the Olympics is whether or not the Olympics was a success? Well, there are many factors that you have to take into account when attempting to answer such a question, one of which is the country you are from. With that said, let us focus on three countries in particular: Russia, Canada and the United States.

At the least, we can say that Russia had very high expectations for their turn at hosting the Olympic games. One main reason for this is that Vladimir Putin is trying to make Russia one of the world’s biggest powers again. Leading up to Sochi, Russia found itself at the center of a number of world issues. With that people in the West worried about the effect that these political situations would have on the Olympics.

Russia worked extremely hard and spent a lot of money on trying to perfect the opening and closing ceremonies. Except for a minor slip up with some lights not forming into an Olympic ring, both ceremonies where perfectly executed. So, I believe that they achieved the goal of pageantry.

Another goal for Russia was to win the hockey, a sport that Russians view with national pride, gold medal. Vladimir Putin was even quoted saying to the Canadian Olympic team headquarters in early February, “We all, and I personally, wish you all luck, of course maybe not at all of the hockey matches.”

They did not win the gold, or even medal.

Lastly, another large goal they wanted to achieve was in ice skating. Russia had this in their grasps after winning the team gold and having front-runners in the women individual competition (Yulia Lipnitskaya) and in the men individual competition (Evgeni Plushenko).

But, in a turn of events, Yulia came in 5^th place, and teammate Adelina Sotnikova took the gold. Also, in a controversial event after a fall during practice, Evgeni retired from skating just minutes before the individual competition. Overall Russia received two gold medals in ice-skating, demonstrating clear success.

In addition, Russia came in first in the gold and overall medal count. For all of these reasons, and having achieved 2 of the 3 goals set out for them, I believe that Russia had a successful Olympics.

The next country that had a major part in the Sochi Olympics was Canada. They hosted the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver and they did very well, so the pressure was on to perform well once again. Canada had many goals for the Olympics as well.

The first was to win gold in men’s individual figure skating. Canadian Ice skater, Patrick Chan, was favored to win the gold in his hometown of Canada during the 2010 Olympics. But after some missteps, he placed fifth in Vancouver. As a result, the Sochi Olympics was all about redemption and coming back to win the gold.

After, two beautiful performances with only slight falls, Chan claimed the silver medal for Canada. He was disappointed and quoted saying, “I had the gold medal right in front of me but I just did not grasp it. It is tough.”  Although he claimed the silver medal, which is a huge achievement in itself, because he came to win the gold and did not, I believe that Canada did not achieve this goal.

Another goal was for Alex Bilodeau of Canada to take home the men’s moguls gold. After a shaky first run, Alex pulled it together and, in his second run, repeated gold for Canada in men’s moguls.

The next goal that Canada wanted to achieve was the gold in hockey; Canada, too, views hockey with a great deal of national pride. After some tough matches, Canada not only won the gold in men’s hockey, but they also won the gold in women’s.

Overall in this Olympics, Canada was a huge success. After all, Canada finished second in the gold medal count and fourth in the overall medal count.

The last country that made a huge impact on the Sochi games was the United States of America. America came into the Olympics with high hopes. We had many favorites to win gold. People like Shaun White, Jamie Anderson, J.R. Celski and so many more were front-runners coming into this Olympics.

One main goal of the American team was to win at least one medal in men’s half pipe. This is an event that Shaun White has won gold in twice, and he was looking for another one. In fact, the United States had so many great snowboarders in this event that we were favored to possibly sweep the podium.

But the American team could not pull it together, and the highest we placed in the event was Shaun White’s fourth place. So, we did not accomplish this goal.

With hopes of winning slope style, we rooted for Jaime Anderson. She won the first ever gold in this event. But she was not the only American to snag the gold in a slope style event. American Sage Kostenburg won the gold in men’s slopes style snowboarding as well. This goal, we obtained.

But in the long run, after falls from some of our favorite athletes like Shaun White, J.R. Celski, and Shani Davis, America came in second in the metal count. This is something that has not occurred for a long time. So overall, I do not believe that the United States had as successful an Olympics as it could have had.

In all, after recapping the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games, the question still stands: Were the Olympics successful? After much thought, I believe that this is a question that can be answered based on the nation participating and its goals before entering.

However, the Olympics have always been an extremely enjoyable event that unites countries in a peaceful way through sports. From a broader perspective, how could the Olympics – an event that bring peace and joy to countries around the world – ever be unsuccessful?