"The Russians' collapse was baffling. This was a team that had beaten Canada in the last two world championship finals, including the 2008 final in Quebec City, and had eliminated the Canadians from the 2006 Turin Olympics.

But on Wednesday, they were a gang that could not shoot straight ...

The Russians, like the Canadians, were under pressure to reach the gold medal game. But instead they go home after falling to Canada and losing a shootout to Slovakia.

'Same thing like if it was the Canadians,' said [Ilya] Bryzgalov, when asked what it meant for Russia to lose. 'It's a disaster. End of the world,' [added Bryzgalov, who was brought in after Evgeni Nabokov, normally one of the world's top goalies, stopped only 17 of 23 shots.]"

"This is what Canadians have wanted, from the moment the cauldron was lit, from the awarding of the Olympics to Vancouver seven years ago, probably from birth. This is what they demanded during their beloved hockey team's humiliating reality, a must-win play-in game Tuesday against Germany, when they chanted 'We want Russia!'

They weren't kidding around. Team Canada, so rattled after losing to the United States in pool play Sunday, pole-axed the talented Russians."

"Many specialists believe that Winter Olympics 2010 may become the worst Olympics in the history of team Russia. For the country that has the most amount of snow on the planet, the results are at the very least depressing, reports Trud newspaper.

During the last and not very successful for Russia Olympic Games in Turin, the country was number four in overall medal standing with eight gold medals. Glancing at the schedule of the rest of the competition, we can see that things do not look promising for Russia."

"We all know Canada has problems with the future lines drawn on Arctic maps and we all know Canada lives in the shadow of its larger neighbour to the south. The abject cruelty shown by Canadian soldiers in international conflicts is scantily referred to, as indeed is the utter incapacity of this county to host a major international event, due to its inferiority complex, born of a trauma being the skinny and weakling bro to a beefy United States and a colonial outpost to the United Kingdom, whose Queen smiles happily from Canadian postage stamps.

Maybe it is this which makes the Canadians so ... retentive, or cowardly. So it is not exactly a huge surprise to have international skating experts from the four corners of the Earth criticizing the decision to award the Men's figure skating Gold medal to the U.S. athlete Evan Lysacek over the reigning Olympic Champion Evgeny Plushenko, whose superior performance was inexplicably ignored."