The news agencies Interfax and ITAR-Tass cited Gennady Shvets as saying that Tyagachev had tendered his resignation. “This obviously concerns the Russian athletes’ performance at the Vancouver Olympic Games,” Interfax quoted the spokesman as saying.

Russia won just 15 medals in Vancouver — and only three golds — two fewer than its previous low in Salt Lake City in 2002. Officials said before the Olympics that 30 medals and a top-three finish in the medal standings were the targets.

Russia placed 11th for golds and sixth in the overall medal count, results which proved particularly embarrassing as the country takes the torch for the next Winter Olympics at its Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014.

Tyagachev, 63, helped Russia win hosting rights to the Sochi Games. He is a personal friend and, according to some Russian news reports, a former ski instructor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

There was no word on any replacement.

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said on Tuesday in televised comments that he would “calmly leave” his post if Medvedev’s warnings were directed at him. Mutko — who has so far resisted calls to resign from a wide array of Russian politicians — on Monday blamed several factors for the Vancouver flop. He said the team was unlucky, that no one in Russia takes new winter sports such as freestyle skiing seriously, and that doping bans had deprived Russia of several leading medal contenders.

Canada’s National Post reported last week that the supply of 100,000 free condoms distributed to about 7,000 athletes and officials had been dangerously depleted. That’s right: 14 free condoms per person? Not enough! Either there were some serious water balloon fights, or the athletes in Vancouver were champions in the sack as well as on the ice. An emergency shipment of another 25,000 johnnies sped its way to Vancouver, courtesy of the Canadian Foundation for AIDS research. Rocketing down icy slopes must be pretty good for the libido.

And let’s not forget the other champions of risque behavior this year: The Daily Mail awarded its gold medal for smuttiness to Norwegian cross-country skier Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset, who blamed a lackluster showing on the slopes on his porn-watching habit. Scotty Lago, the U.S. snowboarder who was sent home after racy pictures surfaced of him online, won bronze in his event but took home the silver for scandal. And, of course, German curler Melanie Robillard, who posed topless for a calendar before the games. It just goes to show that Olympic athletes also have Olympic-sized libidos. And, as Canadian skier Emily Brydon commented to The Telegraph, “What happens in Olympic Village, stays in Olympic Village.”

At the gridlocked intersection of Robson and Granville, people were crowd surfing and clinging to lampposts, singing the soccer victory song, “Ole! Ole!”

“The crowds are good-natured so far,” police spokeswoman Jana McGuinness said about an hour after the game. “We’re very busy with searches of crowds in certain areas. But no problems. We’ve got a few kids trying to climb a couple lampposts. Overall so far, it’s going great.”

The hockey victory — the final event of the Vancouver Olympics — made it 14 gold medals for Canada, the most any country has won at a Winter Games.

That gave the hometown fans only more to celebrate, and they gladly did.

“Pandemonium!” screamed bartender Derrick Smith, who was so overwhelmed by the madness inside his bar, the Lamplighter Pub in the Gastown section, that he ran outside for a breath of fresh air.

“This is nuts!” he said, calling it his busiest day ever.

A duo of waitresses emerged from a nearby Old Spaghetti Factory, screamed “We won!” and headed back to work.

In the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, fans leaned out of windows clanging cowbells. People screamed and danced, and drivers honked their car horns. A passing police car flashed his lights and briefly flicked on his siren — in celebration, not to break anything up.

In the village of Whistler, below the mountain where the Alpine skiing races were held, a group of six men ran across cobblestone paths, each waving a Canadian flag, one attached to a hockey stick, another to a fishing rod.

The main plaza at the center of the village was packed full of people yelling as Crosby’s goal was replayed on a large screen. Everyone, it seemed, was wearing red — hats, shirts, face paint — and toting flags of various sizes. One group unfurled overhead a flag large enough that it fit two dozen revelers underneath.

How about the U.S. fans?

A few Americans walking dejectedly across downtown got hugs from Canadians. Three guys draped in American flags and U.S. hockey jerseys sat dejectedly at a public square.

“It was heartbreaking for sure to score with 30 seconds left in the game and then to lose it,” said 26-year-old John Bullard of Bellingham, Wash. “But Canada’s been very nice. So it’s fun. … We gave them a run for their money.”

Only about 19,000 people were fortunate enough to be inside the arena. One man said he and his three buddies each paid about $1,500 for their seats.

“You gotta do it,” said the man, who wouldn’t give his name. “Any true Canadian would do it.”

Another was turned away at the gate because he bought counterfeit tickets. He went through the streets yelling as loud as he could, “Make sure you don’t buy fake tickets,” an expletive underlining his disgust.

There were all sorts of game-watching parties, of course, but also some game-listening groups. Several dozen people gathered at the popular Robson Square to hear it played over loudspeakers. Another dozen clustered around a woman with a transistor radio at a hot dog stand near the Waterfront train station.

Canadians had been looking forward to this game from the day they won the bid to host the Olympics. Getting a rematch against the Americans after losing to them a week before only heightened the excitement.

About four hours before the game, Brendan Fisher and Ronan Mackey couldn’t stand to wait any longer. So they grabbed their sticks, two nets and went to play some pickup hockey — right outside the arena.

“This was the only way we thought we could calm our nerves,” Mackey said.

Then the cops approached, one of them saying, “We’re going to have to shut this down — unless we can play.”

——

AP Sports Writers Larry Lage, Anne M. Peterson, Janie McCauley and Howard Fendrich contributed to this report.

Canadians, Costas mused, have always displayed an ability to laugh at themselves — a quality sorely lacking in some of their neighbors. At least the humor seemed intentional; why else you would ask William Shatner to speak to a worldwide audience on “What It Means to be Canadian.”

“You have to dream big,” he said solemnly, “in a land that is the final frontier.”

Canadians are not big on sarcasm — as a Canadian actor on “30 Rock” recently explained it, “We have a small Jewish population” — but there’s a limit to even Canadian politeness. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard 60,000 people guffaw.

That changed the mood, observed Costas’s co-anchor Al Michaels. So did Catherine O’Hara, who cheerfully warned visitors that, “When you pee your name in the snow, we know who you are.”

Then came a parade of what Costas called “the always enjoyable giant inflated beavers.” The beavers were followed by a colossal inflatable moose. Back in New York, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Committee must have been green.

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, told everyone, “To the athletes of these games, we say you have made us proud. These were excellent and very friendly games.” He was right, and you could see it in the faces of the athletes. Ryan Miller, the star goalie of the U.S. hockey team, had, a little more than two hours earlier, looked distraught when Team USA lost to Canada in overtime. Now, as the athletes paraded around the stadium, he was beaming as he snapped photos on his cell phone.

“This is what the Olympics are about,” said Michaels, and the comment wasn’t mere sentiment. The whole atmosphere was so friendly and goofy that when the athletes formed a giant June Taylor dancer-like formation it didn’t seem to matter that no one could quite understand what letters they were trying to make. Neither, apparently, could Costas, who paused and said, “As we bid fond farewell to Vancouver …”

Accompanied by his own acoustic guitar, Neil Young made the evening complete by singing “Long May You Run” as the Olympic flame was extinguished. It would have been a great place to end things, but unfortunately, Michael Buble then did an ersatz Broadway-like musical number I couldn’t identify backed by oversized Mounties, hockey players and what looked like models wearing giant maple leafs. It was everything the ceremony had not been up to that point — Canada imagined by Baz Luhrmann.

Oh, Canada: Just one minute of Leonard Cohen would have made it all right.