TURIN, Italy – The curtain fell on the Turin Olympic Games last night with the flame extinguished and the Olympic flag passed to Vancouver for 2010.

Last night’s closing ceremony put an end to what has been viewed as a dismal Games for Americans. Despite their 25 medals, the most ever won in a Winter Games on foreign soil, the failures and misdeeds by high-profile athletes colored these Games in a negative light for the U.S. team.

We came to these Games trying to figure out whether it was Torino or Turin, and something about these games got lost in translation (or tape delay) in its journey across the Atlantic. Prime-time ratings fell in America as people learned of results on the Internet hours before NBC broadcast replays of the events.

“There’s very little buzz in these Olympics,” said Marc Ganis, a sports marketing expert. “The results are on the Internet 10 hours before events are shown. It’s having a dramatic impact in TV viewers for the first time.”

Vancouver should be better with more live events on NBC, and America will likely finish near the top of the medal standings gain. Kimmie Meissner and Ted Ligety look like stars of the future, and Sasha Cohen and Apolo Anton Ohno said they may be back for another Games.

While Americans will probably remember the Turin Games more for the U.S. team’s busts, there were some successes here:

* Joey Cheek won gold the long track speedskating 500 meters, and then donated $40,000 to Right To Play, a charity helping children in war-torn countries through sports.

* Ohno won gold, silver and bronze. He spoke after winning gold in the short track 500 meters of the sacrifices he made living in a dormitory at the U.S. training center in Colorado. He talked of giving up his social life to win gold, sounding like the anti-Bode.

* The U.S. men’s curling team won the bronze, giving the United States its first medal in the event. Pete Fenson, a pizzeria owner from Minnesota, led the team to its historic finish.

* Sure, Cohen choked. She looked shaky from the moment she took the ice in Thursday’s free skate, but the 21-year-old recovered from an early fall and slip to win silver. She also handled herself with grace after the disappointing finish.

* Long Island’s Emily Hughes was a late replacement for Michelle Kwan at these Games. She put down her SAT study guide and hopped a plane to Turin, where she gave her best performance, earning seventh place.

* Ice dancers Ben Agosto and Tanith Belbin won the silver, America’s first medal in the event in 30 years.

* The snowboarders carried the U.S. team for the first week of these Games. Gold medalist Shaun White may be the biggest American star to come out of Turin.

And then there was these moments, that ranged from embarrassing to maddening:

* Alpine skier Bode Miller is the biggest Olympic marketing flop since Dan (O’Brien) and Dave (Johnson). Miller went 0-for-5 in his events here and made more headlines for his nightlife than his skiing. He put a punctuation mark on his stay here with comments about how he did not care as much about medals as partying.

* Speedskaters Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis each had a chance to be a great story here. Instead they bickered with each other and the feud overshadowed their accomplishments.

* The hot dog heard ’round the world came when Lindsey Jacobellis grabbed her snowboard, fell on her butt and lost the gold in snowboard cross. The 20-year-old tried to deny she was showboating before ultimately confessing.

* Jeret “Speedy” Peterson flopped in the aerials, then was sent home after getting into a fight with an “acquaintance.”

* Both the U.S. men’s and women’s hockey teams flopped. The women’s team managed a bronze medal, while the men’s team didn’t make it out of the quarterfinals.

* Michelle Kwan’s Olympics ended before they started. The figure skater could not overcome a groin injury and backed out of the Games after two practices in Turin.