VANCOUVER, British Columbia  No gold is awarded to the nation that takes home the most medals at the Vancouver Games, yet for a few countries, the battle to rack up the most golds, silvers and bronzes can be one of the most competitive sports at the Olympics.  Join the discussion with news, analysis and features from the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.  Doug Mills/The New York Times  Lindsey Vonn was brought up within the U.S. Ski Team, but now that she is an accomplished skier — she is the first American woman to win consecutive World Cup titles — she pursues coaching and training elsewhere. More Photos »  Kim Stallknecht for The New York Times  Shani Davis, who won two medals in Vancouver, has a frosty relationship with the national speedskating team. More Photos >  After winning two medals Saturday, the United States is assured of breaking the record for the most medals ever won at a Winter Games, with 36 and one more ensured in men’s hockey. But in proclaiming the accomplishment, the American officials made no mention of the fact that many of the athletes who have contributed to the medal haul are those who have gone their own way, sometimes barely linked to United States Olympic team programs.  In speedskating, Shani Davis, winner of a gold and a silver, has such a strained relationship with U.S. Speedskating, the sport’s national governing body, that he does not allow his biography to be posted on its Web site. Lindsey Vonn, who won a gold and a bronze in Alpine skiing, was cultivated in the U.S. Ski Team system but now receives intensive independent training.  The snowboarder Shaun White, who won a gold, prepared for the winter season by training privately on a halfpipe that was financed by Red Bull, his sponsor.  “Nobody’s really telling Shaun White what to do,” said Jake Burton, the founder of Burton Snowboards, whose company also sponsors White.  Mr. Burton also serves on the board of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team Foundation. With celebrity athletes like snowboarders, he said, “it’s like a world-class tennis player or golfer; if they’re looking for support or coaching, it happens on their terms.”  The United States is one of the few nations that do not publicly finance its Olympic athletes. That state of affairs has given rise to a fluid, entrepreneurial system that is alternately blamed for athletes’ shortcomings and praised as their greatest advantage. Competitors with enough star power can pursue independent careers while promising athletes are nurtured in more traditional development programs.  This hybrid system has dismayed officials in some sports, like track and field, whose leaders have accused athletes of allowing agents and shoe company representatives to make many of their career decisions. But it seems to work well in the Winter Games, in which American athletes have more than held their own this year against traditional powerhouses like Germany and Norway. Entering Sunday’s final day of competition, the United States leads Germany by seven medals. .  Other factors have also contributed to the United States’ success in the standings, including the addition of sports to the Olympic program that play to the Americans’ strengths, like snowboarding and short-track speedskating. The United States Olympic Committee has also increased investment in winter sports, a boost that began before the 2002 Salt Lake Games.  “We’ve been building to this for a long time,” said Bill Marolt, the chief executive of U.S. Ski and Snowboard, whose athletes have won a combined 21 medals. “Our kids like being here, I think they like the big stage. They psych themselves up to perform on the big stage, and they’ve responded.”  Many countries determine the medal standings according to the number of gold medals won; by this measure, the United States is in third place with nine, behind Canada and Germany. The United States has been a dominant presence at the Winter Games since 2002, when it won 34 medals, second to Germany’s 36. At the 2006 Turin Games, the Americans won 25 medals, second to Germany’s 29.  This success, American Olympic leaders say, has its roots in a change in strategy that began before the Salt Lake Games, when the Winter Olympics were largely overlooked.  “There was this feeling that it was the Forgotten Games,” said Steve Roush, who arrived at the U.S.O.C. in 2000 after a career at USA Swimming. He later became the chief of sport performance and resigned in 2009. “I think the desire by the U.S.O.C. to perform well as the host kind of changed that whole mind-set.”  In a program nicknamed Podium, the U.S.O.C.’s high-performance team increased its sponsorship of winter sports, invested money in science and technology and took a closer look at the plans of individual sports federations, rewarding those that demonstrated either performance or potential.  The program’s success caught the attention of the Canadians, who were bidding for the Winter Games for Vancouver.  “Salt Lake was hugely successful,” said Cathy Priestner Allinger, a Canadian who served as the managing director of sport for the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee. Ms. Priestner Allinger went on to become an architect of Canada’s Own the Podium, a $110 million initiative aimed at vaulting its athletes to the top of the medal standings for Vancouver.  “We did try to look at what successes they had and see how we could apply them against our plans here,” she said. “The Americans just believed that they had everything they needed in 2002.”  A day after the Salt Lake closing ceremony, Mr. Roush recalled, he and other officials met to decide what to do. “It was, how do we sustain this?” he said.  One strategy was to look for opportunities in sports in which Americans had underperformed, like Nordic combined, in which no American had ever won a medal. This year, United States athletes have won medals in each of the three Nordic combined events, with Bill Demong and Johnny Spillane winning gold and silver in the large hill/10-kilometer cross-country event.  Some athletes have thrived within the system  including the short-track speedskaters Apolo Ohno, a winner of a silver and two bronzes, and J. R. Celski, who won two bronzes. The Alpine skier Bode Miller has clashed with his coaches at the U.S. Ski Team and even left the program after not winning a medal at the Turin Games. Miller rejoined the team this season and won a gold, a silver and a bronze.  Others, like snowboarders, have gone it alone. “Those riders make very good livings, and they’re very well off,” Mr. Burton said. “I think that’s the ideal model for any Olympic athletes.”  American Olympic leaders say they are fine with allowing athletes to train on their own.  “We’re not at all jealous of the fact that they went outside of the system,” said Scott Blackmun, the chief executive of the U.S.O.C., who served as a senior managing director of sport during the period before the Salt Lake Games. “We’re here to support them in the best possible training environment for them.”  Mr. Blackmun and others acknowledge that continuing success is not guaranteed. Other countries  Australia and China, in particular  are beginning to challenge in the Americans’ strongest sports, like snowboarding and freestyle skiing.  “I think we can’t sit back and rest on our laurels and say, ‘We’ve got Shaun White; we’re O.K.,’ ” Mr. Roush said. “They’re going to catch up real fast. The rest of the world is developing talent rapidly.”
The U.S. is adding to its medal haul, but many of its top athletes train outside the influence of their teams.