Canada, which has an inferiority complex the size of, well, Canada (gee, I wonder why), just might fold up its tent and move to the Arctic now that it isn’t going to win the most medals at the Winter Olympics. If it makes them feel any better up there, the United States never led the medal count from 1932 on when, chances are, some of the European countries probably got lost in upstate New York while trying to find Lake Placid. Talk about a one-road-in, one-road-out sleepy little town.

But that’s one of the saving graces of the conclusion of the Winter Games -- we’re no longer subjected to the “Medal Count” feature in the daily newspaper or on the telly. Time was when governments picked up the tab for competing teams, but now that television is the main underwriter, get rid of the tiresome nationalism.

On second thought, check that. As much as TV pours into the Games -- NBC is paying $820 million and says it is probably going to lose $250 million anyway -- some host cities are still paying off their debt. One of the reasons Chicago was actually glad to lose out on the 2016 Games is it thought it would be paying for it until at least the 22nd century.

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Aside from the outstanding success of so many U.S. athletes, it has been a joy to watch and listen to people like Lindsey Vonn, Julia Mancuso, Evan Lysacek, Apolo Ohno, Shaun White, Bode Miller, Shani Davis, Ryan Miller and others being interviewed. They have been outstanding, without exception, which has hardly been the case over the years. All you have to do is sit there and listen to some American representative whine and cry and make excuses and you say to yourself, ‘No wonder so many folks around the world hate us.’

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Being what is commonly referred to as a “traditionalist,” especially when it comes to Olympic sports, I thought it would take at least a generation to become really interested in the X-Games type activities that now crowd the schedule. But some are so much fun to watch that I’m on board fulltime.

The one where four skiers (men or women) line up across a track the width of a pitcher’s mound (I still haven’t learned all the names of the events yet) and roller coaster over hill and dale is an outright scream. And what Shaun White and his colleagues do in what is called the “halfpipe” qualifies as death-defying.

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Several Winter Games back, when the program had barely enough to fill up a week’s time and we had a lot of time to sit around and kibitz, we decided to think up our own events. My favorite was a biathlon wherein participants ski jumped and fired rifles at the same time. Let me see you hit a target while hurtling through space with the ground falling away at about 20 feet per second.

Figure skating gold medalist Scott Hamilton (1984), who started out in hockey, said “Count me in as a goalie if everybody switches sports unless, of course, Bobby Hull is going to be shooting the puck at me at 200 miles an hour.”

Imagine hockey players having to perform an ice dancing, free dance between the second and third periods of a game, or Ohno going down a luge run on his skates. Yeah, we had a lot of time to kill.

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One sport I’m still having trouble adjusting to even though it has been around since the winter carnival started in France in 1924 is curling. It still looks like barroom shuffleboard to me and the guys taking part don’t seem to be having near the fun the guys in the local grog shop do.

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Speaking of nice people, wasn’t it devastating to learn that gymnast Shawn Johnson, who checked in with a gold and two silver medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics, ripped up a knee while skiing during a family vacation in Colorado. She’s a fantastic athlete so there’s no need for her to crawl into a cocoon and play it safe all the time, especially since kids are here to have fun. Besides, she’ll have plenty of time to make it to the 2012 Games if she chooses. Heck, this could have happened while she was taking part in “Dancing With The Stars.”

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Usually, analyst Shannon Sharpe, besides being hilarious, is right on while discussing pro football news. But his take concerning LT (LaDainian Tomlinson) being released by the San Diego Chargers might have been a tad off: “It’s said it’s like being told you’re not good enough for them.”

Maybe. But perhaps the fact that he’s owed a $2 million bonus next week has something to do with it. LT has nine tough years on his body and one of the time-honored clichés in sports is it’s better to get rid of a guy a year too early than a year too late. Ask the Orioles, who got rid of Frank Robinson about three seasons too early.

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Those bouquets of flowers they’re passing out to the medal winners at the Olympics? What are they, broccoli or cauliflower? Take a closer look.

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One thing I’ve always wanted to see college basketball do: if a couple of teams are involved in a hack-a-rama right from the start, send the teams back to their benches and tell the coaches to come up with a different game plan. UConn and West Virginia combined for 46 fouls the other night, and the former shot 30-for-42 from the free throw line. It must have been horrible to watch.

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Did you ever notice how a college coach, no matter the sport, always points out how “well-coached” the other team is? What’s that all about?