U.S. eclipses 100 medals

by-Mike Penner of the Los Angeles Times

ATHENS, Greece —For the 538 American athletes who went souvenir shopping these last two weeks in Greece, hunting for trinkets cast in gold, silver and bronze, this is how they made out:

They came ... well, everyone did except a dozen or so top-flight NBA players, who viewed these Games as a no-win proposition and, sure enough, they called it right.

They saw and were pleasantly surprised by the acute shortage of “Yankee Go Home” banners at any of the 40 Olympic venues.

They conquered.

Well, kind of.

After the final day of competition, the United States has surpassed the U.S. Olympic Committee’s stated medal goal of 100.

Appropriately enough, the U.S. hit the century mark Saturday night when the underachieving men’s basketball team scraped out the bronze medal against Lithuania.

With 103 medals, the United States’ final 2004 medal output eclipsed U.S. totals in Sydney (97 medals), Atlanta (101) and Seoul (94), and got close to Barcelona (108).

“Coming into these Games, we knew that reaching 100 medals would be an ambitious goal,” USOC President Jim Scherr said. “But we also knew that with the talent and depth on this Olympic team, it was possible.

“The level of competition at these Games has been outstanding, and this will go down as one of the greatest performances ever by a U.S. Olympic team.”

Olympic historian David Wallechinsky sees it differently.

“If you judge success by gold medals won, this will be our worst performance in history,” said Wallechinsky, author of “The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics.”

During the competition, the United States had won 35 gold medals.

“The previous worst was Sydney, where we won 40 gold medals in 300 events,” Wallechinsky said. “Now that’s more medals than we’ve won in other games, but I’m going by percentage of gold medals won.”

The United States’ gold-medal winning percentage in Sydney was 13.3 percent.

The Athens Olympic sports program featured 301 events. The United States’ gold medal total of 35, brings the  gold-medal percentage to 11.6 percent.

Analyzing the United States’ performance, Wallechinsky was struck by two story lines.

“About half of our gold medals have been won by athletes in two sports—men’s track and field and men’s swimming,” he said. “That kind of concentration is quite unusual in large countries.”

Male swimmers and track and field athletes accounted for 15 of the United States’ 35 gold medals. American men won nine gold medals in swimming. If the U.S. men’s swim team competed as a nation, through Saturday, it would have equaled the gold-medal totals of France and Italy and surpassed those of South Korea, Britain and Greece.

Swimmer Michael Phelps won six gold medals—four individually, two on relay teams. By himself, he outperformed the entire Olympic teams of the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Spain and Canada.

The other story line?

“Aside from the fantastic success of the women’s softball and women’s basketball teams, it’s been the underachievement of the American women,” Wallechinsky said. “I don’t have a reason for it. I don’t know why. But there’s a big gap. The women swimmers and the women track and field athletes didn’t come close to what they did in Sydney.”

Only two American women won individual swim gold medals —Natalie Coughlin in the 100-meter backstroke and Amanda Beard in the 200 breaststroke. The U.S. women also won a gold medal in the 800 freestyle relay.

In track and field, American women won only two gold medals —Joanna Hayes in the 100-meter hurdles and a team triumph in the 1,600-meter relay.

Marion Jones won three golds by herself in Sydney, along with two bronze. Four years later, Jones competed only in two events and didn’t come close to medaling. She placed fifth in the long jump and failed to complete a baton exchange after running the second leg of the 400-meter relay.

There were a few surprising gold-medal pickups: men’s gymnastics, men’s eights rowing, Mariel Zagunis in women’s fencing, Matthew Emmons and Kim Rhode in shooting.

American athletes were generally well-received in Athens.

There was a smattering of jeering whistles when the U.S. team was introduced during the opening ceremony. Shawn Crawford, Bernard Williams and Justin Gatlin were booed by Greek fans after sweeping the 200-meter sprint medals, but that was largely a reference to Costas Kenteris, the Greek 200-meter champion in Sydney who withdrew from the Athens Games because of a drug-related controversy.

And Saturday in tae kwon do, American Steven Lopez was booed during a first-round victory over Raid Rasheed of Iraq.

“I expected that the crowd wouldn’t take my side,” Lopez said. “The USA is the best country in the world. We have the power, that’s why people are envious.

“Wherever we are playing, even if it is the world championships or the Olympic Games, people want us to lose. I just hoped that in the Olympic Games, politics would be out of the picture.”

But overall, crowds were polite to American teams and athletes. They might not have rooted for the giant in red, white and blue—underdogs were extremely popular in Athens—but they weren’t openly hostile either.