Sweden at the 2014 Winter Olympics participated in five Olympic tournaments. 55 athletes were Olympic debutants. Sweden won 15 medals in total, making the Sochi games Sweden's most successful Winter Games ever in terms of medals. However, the number of gold medals (2) was lower than in the two previous Winter Games. On 8 February, the first competition day, cross-country skier Charlotte Kalla won the first Swedish medal at the Games. She won the silver medal in the women's 15 km skiathlon event, finishing behind Norway's Marit Bjørgen. Snowboarder Sven Thorgren finished in fourth place in the men's slopestyle, just 1.25 points behind the bronze medalist.
Winter Olympic Games The success of Asian countries stood in stark contrast to the under-performing Russian team, with Vancouver marking a high point for medals won by Asian countries. In 1992 the Asian countries had won fifteen medals, three of which were gold. In Vancouver the total number of medals won by athletes from Asia had increased to thirty-one, with eleven of them being gold. The rise of Asian nations in Winter Olympics sports is due in part to the growth of winter sports programmes and the interest in winter sports in nations such as South Korea, Japan and China. Sochi, Russia, was