PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — High fives. Champagne. Maybe a conga line.

On Sunday afternoon, these and other signs of glee might have been expected in a room filled with Norway’s cross-country ski technicians. Their athletes had just nabbed all three medals in the men’s 15 kilometer + 15 kilometer skiathlon, a glory-cornering performance that almost seemed piggy.

But the mood in what is called the wax cabin — a metal structure half a mile from the finish line, where skis are a science project that never ends — was subdued. Men sat on chairs, looking more relieved than happy. They sipped espresso. They scribbled in notebooks. They would exult, albeit grudgingly, if prodded.

“It’s good,” said Knut Nystad, standing in one corner of the room by a wall with dozens of skis. “On the other hand, it’s what Norwegians have come to expect. Tough crowd to please.”

Nystad, 47, oversees a group of 30 wax techs, as they’re known. Their job is to divine the right combination of wax, skis and snow at a given race — a puzzle with thousands of possible solutions. Get it right and a carbon fiber ski becomes a killer mode of nonmotorized, Alpine transportation. Athletes glide faster down hills and cover ground more efficiently through the rest of the course. Get it wrong and the same athletes will feel like they are trekking through mud.