Americans take a shine to the metal

The United States left Vancouver with a record 37 medals. A look at each of the American medal winners:

Alpine skiing

LINDSEY VONN

Downhill: Gold

Vonn, the top female ski racer in the world, delivered the race of her life despite a sore right shin. Relegating teammate and rival Julia Mancuso to the silver medal only intensified the drama.

Super-G: Bronze

This may be the race that haunts Vonn, as the gold-medal favorite nailed the tricky upper section “Fog Bank,” then let off the gas near the end. That cost her gold to Austria and the silver to Slovenia.

JULIA MANCUSO

Downhill: Silver

Mancuso had not finished in the top three of a race for two years when, from the No. 10 start position, she put down the time to beat. Chemmy Alcott of Britain said the race was over. Lindsey Vonn, skiing 16th, proved it wasn’t.

Super combined: Silver

Mancuso’s second silver, added to her gold in Turin, briefly gave her more Alpine medals than any skier in American history. This was before Bode Miller won his third, fourth and fifth Olympic medals.

BODE MILLER

Downhill: Bronze

Miller waited four years to atone for the disaster of the 2006 Turin Games and earned the first of three medals in Whistler in his first event. Miller finished 0.09 behind winner Didier Defago of Italy and 0.02 behind Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal in the closest downhill in Olympic history.

Super-G: Silver

Miller won his second medal of the Games and had the fastest time out of the No. 11 bib, knocking teammate Andrew Weibrecht out of the top spot. Miller held the lead until Norway’s Svindal clipped the American’s time by 0.28.

Super combined: Gold

The race that will cement Miller’s legacy -- his first gold medal in his fourth Olympics. Miller, who has struggled for years in two-run slaloms, welcomed the format change to one downhill and one run of slalom to win the gold over Croatia’s Ivica Kostelic by 0.33.

ANDREW WEIBRECHT

Super-G: Bronze

Weibrecht, racing in his first Olympics, vowed to make up for his disappointing No. 21 finish in the downhill. The 24-year-old responded with a sizzling time to beat from the No. 3 start position and then hung on for the bronze. The next week he shared the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Nordic combined

JOHNNY SPILLANE

Normal hill individual: Silver

Spillane lost by 0.04 of a second in a thrilling sprint with France’s Jason Lamy Chappuis. Still, he made history as the first American to medal in this sport, which combines ski jumping with cross-country skiing.

Large hill individual: Silver

Spillane slipped late in the race but recovered to finish a few seconds behind teammate Bill Demong. He became only the fourth man in Olympic history to medal in all three of his sport’s events during the same Winter Games.

U.S. TEAM

4x5K team: Silver

Eight years after finishing an agonizing fourth in Salt Lake City, Spillane, Demong and Todd Lodwick finally got their team medal. Fourth man and relative newcomer Brett Camerota provided an unexpected push.

BILL DEMONG

Large hill individual: Gold

Demong surged from sixth place at the start of the cross-country race to cap a historic week for the U.S. in Nordic combined. His victory provided redemption after a career hampered by injury and mishap.

Bobsled

STEVE HOLCOMB

Four-man: Gold

Holcomb beat a degenerative eye disease that was threatening to blind him to win Olympic gold and cap a season in which he earned the world title and overall World Cup title. He won four-man in convincing fashion, ending a 62-year U.S. winless streak, by building an insurmountable lead before the last of four runs.

ERIN PAC

Women’s bobsled: Bronze

Pac was the pilot of USA-2 in name only. She was the best the Americans had to offer and kept alive the U.S. women’s streak of reaching the podium at every Olympics in which the sport has been contested. Only a slight case of nerves kept her from being one step higher.

Figure skating

EVAN LYSACEK

Men’s: Gold

Lysacek is the first U.S. man to win Olympic gold since Brian Boitano in 1988 and the first reigning men’s world champion to win since Scott Hamilton in 1984. He delivered the performances of his life when the lights were brightest.

MERYL DAVIS/ CHARLIE WHITE

Ice dancing: Silver

Davis, she of the silent-movie-star looks, and Charlie White, he of the Harpo Marx haircut, were the perfect embodiment of what ice dance has become: a blend of athleticism, with eye-catching lifts and artistic quality. The two University of Michigan juniors could contend for gold four years from now.

Short-track speedskating

APOLO ANTON OHNO

1,500: Silver

The Seattle native took advantage of a crash by Korean skaters Lee Ho-Suk and Sung Si-Bak on the final turn to win his sixth career medal, making the three-time Olympian the most decorated American man in Winter Games history.

1,000: Bronze

Ohno slipped in a corner and found himself in last place with three laps remaining, but he hustled and salvaged a bronze out of the near-catastrophe. And he thus notched his seventh Winter Games medal, breaking his tie with Bonnie Blair for most ever.

J.R. CELSKI

1,500: Bronze

Cruising in fifth place heading into the final turn, Celski found himself with a medal when Korean skaters Lee Ho-Suk and Sung Si-Bak crashed and opened a path to the finish line for the Federal Way, Wash., native.

KATHERINE REUTTER

1,000: Silver

Reutter screamed for a handful of victory laps afterward, having eyed the 1,000-meter event as the race she wanted to win. She became the first U.S. female short-tracker to win an individual medal since 1994.

U.S. MEN

5,000 relay: Bronze

The race represented Apolo Anton Ohno’s last chance to add an eighth medal after he’d been disqualified in the 500-meter final earlier in the night. He anchored the U.S. team of J.R. Celski, Jordan Malone and Travis Jayner on a wild final lap.

U.S. WOMEN

3,000 relay: Bronze

The U.S. squad actually finished a distant fourth, but Korea was disqualified for impeding late in the race, bumping the Americans up to the podium. The team was made up of Katherine Reutter, Allison Baver, Alyson Dudek, Lana Gehring and Kimberly Derrick.

Speedskating

SHANI DAVIS

1,000: Gold

Davis used a huge final lap to defeat Korea’s Mo Tae-bum, repeating his gold medal in the event from Turin and becoming only the third U.S. male to win more than one speedskating gold medal.

1,500: Silver

Davis stared down a phenomenal night from the Netherlands’ Mark Tuitert . . . and couldn’t catch up in the end. It was a second straight silver medal for Davis in the race he said he’s always dreamed of winning.

CHAD HEDRICK

1,000: Bronze

The medal came as a surprise to Hedrick, who had been focusing on the 1,500 and rarely practiced his 1,000-meter race. It was, at the time, Hedrick’s fourth Olympic medal.

U.S. MEN

Team pursuit: Silver

The U.S. pulled a mammoth upset of the Netherlands in the semifinal and gave favored Canada a run in the gold-medal race, but it didn’t have the kick at the end. Awarded medals were Hedrick, Trevor Marsicano, Jonathan Kuck and Brian Hansen.

Snowboarding

SHAUN WHITE

Halfpipe: Gold

His coach said afterward that White had never pulled off the victory-lap-type run. With the gold medal assured, he thrilled the crowd with a halfpipe show for the ages, soaring high in the night air with his Double McTwist 1260 on his second run.

SCOTT LAGO

Halfpipe: Bronze

First Olympics. First medal. First international controversy. Unfortunately, Lago will probably be remembered more for the racy post-competition picture that resulted in an early departure from the Olympics.

HANNAH TETER

Halfpipe: Silver

The social activist showed she has the ability to deliver on the world’s biggest stage, following up on her gold-medal performance in 2006. Heading into Vancouver, there was much more talk about the medal chances of teammates Gretchen Bleiler and Kelly Clark.

KELLY CLARK

Halfpipe: Bronze

Nothing like the pressure of having fallen on the first run and then having Torah Bright (the eventual winner) crank it up with a stellar second run. Clark stayed cool and said that in some ways, the bronze meant more to her than the gold in 2002 because of all the hard work along the way.

SETH WESCOTT

Snowboard cross: Gold

It was one of the more dramatic finishes at Cypress Mountain. Wescott, the defending Olympic champion, went from fourth to first in the final as local favorite Mike Robertson relinquished a huge lead.

Freestyle skiing

JERET ‘ SPEEDY’ PETERSON

Aerials: Silver

Peterson had hearts racing when he stood atop the ramp for his second jump in the finals. He then pulled off his vaunted Hurricane trick for the first time in the Olympics, landing it and the silver.

HANNAH KEARNEY

Moguls: Gold

The crowd was poised to celebrate the accomplishment of Jenn Heil, who was expected to win gold for Canada, which would have been the first Canadian Olympic gold on home soil. Instead it went to Kearney, the first U.S. gold medal in Vancouver.

SHANNON BAHRKE

Moguls: Bronze

Bahrke is planning on retiring from competitive skiing, and she leaves the sport with two freestyle medals in the Olympics. Her first was a silver in 2002, which makes her the first U.S. female freestyler to have won multiple Olympic medals.

BRYON WILSON

Moguls: Bronze

The 21-year-old artist was on the national B team a few months ago and got into a World Cup event only when a teammate was injured. Alex Bilodeau of Canada took gold and defending champion Dale Begg-Smith of Australia the silver.

Hockey

U.S. WOMEN

Silver

The U.S. women romped through the tournament, outscoring their opponents 40-2, until they were shut out by Canada in the gold-medal game. Angela Ruggiero of Simi Valley and Jenny Potter became four-time medal winners with their second silver to go with gold in 1998, silver in 2002 and bronze in 2006.

U.S. MEN

Silver

The U.S. men defeated Canada in their final game in the round-robin, then forced overtime with a late goal in regulation in the gold-medal game before losing, giving the joyous Canadians a sweep of the hockey golds.