But what if there was no culprit, nothing to blame except themselves, and the weather? What if the Americans trained for a Winter Olympics at altitude on hard-packed snow and ice, and arrived in Sochi to find they should have trained for an Early March First Buds of Spring Olympics at sea level?

As the temperatures hovered between 60 and 65 degrees, Sochi became a giant tanning parlor and everyone was breaking out their Maui Jims. The balmy air grew heavier down on the coastal plain where the speedskaters competed, while up in the peaks, the snowcaps liquefied. The surface of the Alpine courses looked as if they’d been poured out of a Slush Puppie machine. Miller, the famous snow chemist, described it as grainy “crystals, mushy stuff.”

The Americans weren’t the only ones who gave marginally slower performances in the warmth, or who were frustrated by sloggy conditions. “I’m a big guy and I just sink in this slush,” British cross-country skier Andrew Young said. A German official grabbed scissors and cut the sleeves off some of the cross-country uniforms, but it didn’t help former World Cup champion Axel Teichmann, who finished eighth in the men’s 15K.