Sure, but another aspect of winning a race can be the other party quitting. The Soviets scrapped the N1 (like, they scrapped functional hardware, including many

Sure, but another aspect of winning a race can be the other party quitting. The Soviets scrapped the N1 (like, they scrapped functional hardware, including many flight ready engines) and pretended they never were in a race to land on the Moon. They did start on many LEO space stations that the US had no good answer to, but its questionable if this was still the same race or a race at all. Many people expected the race to just go on - lunar bases, Mars, etc. Given that nothing like that really happened post US landing on the moon, one could really say the race was over the final victory belonged to the US.