If you are good enough to make it to the Olympics, you give up everything in life to train, and there might be only a small window of time you are in peak shape to qualify to go. So just imagine how the U.S. team felt when, just months before they were supposed to attend the Moscow 1980 games, their lifelong dreams were shattered.

After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter announced, “I’ve sent a message today to the United States Olympic Committee spelling out my own position that unless the Soviets withdraw their troops within a month from Afghanistan that the Olympic Games be moved from Moscow to an alternate site or multiple sites or postponed or canceled.” He wouldn’t get his way on any of it, so the U.S. (along with many other countries) boycotted the Olympics.

“It was really devastating, but I said okay, there’s these next four years and I can hang around until 1984,” modern pentathlete Mike Burley told USA Today. “Which I did, but I didn’t make it.” Rower Anita DeFrantz said, “Nobody knows us. We were invisible. We still are invisible. We are the team with no results.”

Forty years later, the athletes got a sort-of apology from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, which said, in part, “It’s abundantly clear in hindsight that the decision to not send a team to Moscow had no impact on the global politics of the era and instead only harmed you.”

Because of the weird rules the Olympics has around some sports, specifically basketball, players who are the furthest thing from amateurs are allowed to compete. This means that Team U.S.A. has in recent decades been stacked with some of the best NBA players, perfectly illustrated by the 1992 Games’ “Dream Team.” But only eight years later, the U.S. had a nightmare on the court.

Things started out badly, according to ESPN, when the U.S. lost to Puerto Rico (which plays under its own flag at the Olympics) a shocking 92-73 in their opening game. But the NBA’s official site records that it would be a loss to Argentina that knocked them out of the medals. In a performance seen as proof the rest of the world was catching up to the U.S. men in quality of play, Argentina won 89-81.

One of the stars of Team U.S.A., Allen Iverson said, “We fought as hard as we could. We couldn’t get it done for whatever reason. They were a better team than us.” Argentina’s coach, Ruben Pablo Magnano said, “They have the best basketball players in the world. Today, we realized, nothing is impossible.” The U.S. would go on to win the bronze, and Argentina would take gold.

According to Swimswam, the U.S. men’s swim team had dominated the 4×100 free relay for decades, winning at seven straight Olympics, until it all changed at Sydney 2000. Perhaps helped along by their home crowd, the Australian team took home the gold in style. So going into the 2004 Olympics, the teams were always going to have a big rivalry. The Australians had an in-his-prime Ian Thorpe, but the U.S. had a young guy named Michael Phelps who seemed like he had real potential. If that wasn’t enough, the Dutch had the 100 free world record holder, Pieter van den Hoogenband, while the Russians were the 2003 World Champions.

It was going to be an exciting race, but the U.S. needed to prove that 2000’s loss was a one-off. And surely, considering what he went on to do, you would think this would be when Phelps got one of his many, many, many gold medals.

Instead, something almost no one was expecting happened. The South African team had the swim of their lives. And indeed, of the entire world’s lives, because they not only won, but they also smashed the world record in the process. While they had done well in the prelims, they had no standout swimmers, no 100 fly prodigies, no medals at major international events, and a relatively young team. In 2003, they had only come in 8th at the World Championships. Yet in the end they won, and the U.S. had to settle for a distant bronze.

The U.S. men’s ice hockey team wasn’t expected to make the final at the 2010 Olympics, according to the New York Times, so the fact that they did was already a Cinderella story. They’d done incredibly well, never falling behind their opponents during the tournament. It looked like there was a chance this was the team that could end the U.S.’ 30-year gold medal dry spell.

So it was disappointing when Canada went up 2-0, making it look like the U.S.’ impossible dream was dead. But then the U.S. scored and, with only 24.4 seconds left in the game, they tied it up. This exciting comeback made it all the more disappointing when they lost 3-2 in overtime.

Surely, after that exciting if disappointing result, Team U.S.A. would mount a comeback in 2014. Well, you know what article you’re reading. This time, Bleacher Report says, there were expectations a win was possible. But then the U.S. didn’t even make it to the gold medal match, instead facing Finland to fight it out for a mere bronze. Still, at least that’s a medal, right? The tenor of the game was perhaps best illustrated by the two goals Finland scored in the second period … within 11 seconds. In the end, the U.S. lost 5-0. Team captain Zach Parise said, “It’s kind of disappointing, a little bit embarrassed for what happened, especially today. It wasn’t a good effort by us.”

It’s a cliché that Canadians are good at hockey. And the Canadian women’s Olympic ice hockey team are doing nothing to dispel that stereotype — they are really, really good at hockey. Unfortunately, Bleacher Report says the team that seems to suffer the most under their dominance is Team U.S.A. Going into the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Canada had won gold the past three games, beating Team U.S.A. in two of those finals. They hadn’t even lost a single game at the Olympics in 16 years. But when the great rivalry came together again at the 2014 final, it was going to be a chance for the U.S. to finally come out on top.

Near the end of the third period, the U.S. was up 2-0. It looked like the impossible was going to happen. Then Canada scored with 3:26 left on the clock, pulled their goalie, and scored again with less than a minute left. With a tie score, the game went into overtime. In a chaotic mix of power plays, penalties, and lots of open ice, Canada managed to score again, winning the gold again.

Bleacher Report did not mince words when covering the U.S.A.’s loss, writing “It was a disastrous result for the Americans. There is no other way to look at it. To be up two goals on their archrival in the biggest game of their lives and lose the way they did? It’s an unmitigated Olympics disaster.”