A bunch of things.
1) Following the skate tampering/abuse scandal involving Simon Cho and coach Jae Su Chun, the short track team broke off into Chun supporters and Chun opposers. This caused friction between the team and means they no longer trained together year-round until the Olympics.
2) Apolo Ohno (and several others) retired. If you'll notice, the only short track skater who did well in Vancouver was Apolo because he had been planning his last hoorah and training like a madman the entire 4 years leading up. Everyone else medaled due to luck (like they did this time) and in the relay, Apolo driving the team.
3) Shani Davis is getting old. He's past his prime and was probably only here for a last hoorah like Shaun White, who is also getting old.
4) We just didn't measure up. Everyone on both the long track and short track teams are talented, but this just wasn't their Olympics. The competition was super steep (Dutch for long track, Koreans and Viktor Ahn for short track). Same thing with individual figure skating. Everyone is a good skater, but none were a match for Yuna Kim, Yulia Lipnitskaya or Adelina Sotnikova and were on equal grounds with Carolina Kostner and Mao Asada.
5) The ice is different (and so is the snow), so many athletes have had problems adjusting.
6) Some long track skaters have taken issue with the new skinsuits.
'Different Angle' ie perspective.
1. The team changed training venues! After training in a familiar territory they skipped out on a familiar place, for a NEW locale, one which was higher in elevation (reports? media).
Athletes like familiarity: having some of them needing to move geographically, for months at a time, to a new place is not good.
2. Peaked, physically. Sometimes people peak physically, then plateau out without improvement! Could have happened to the US team.
3. Netherlands' dominance. Need we say more?
source: 2014 Olympics
Sochi's weather has been very mild and people are complaining the weather conditions are affecting their performance indoor and outdoor.
Also, the Dutch "the orange people" are known to dominate in speed skating.
Training at high altitude on hard ice, when the Olympics were on soft ice at sea level, is my guess more so than the suit thing.
