Second place not an option in U.S. sports

Part IV of V

Medals. Medals by the fistful. Gold, silver and bronze. One hundred in all.

Such was the mission, the mantra hung over the entrance to the United States Olympic Committee training center in Colorado Springs.

Never mind improved competition, worrisome security, a mushrooming track-and-field drug scandal.

Three months before the Athens Games, USOC officials are sitting in the ballroom of a New York hotel, talking Grecian neckwear. Not the kind for sale on the Plaka.

Delusional optimism? Or insufferable braggadocio? Really, who could say?

“We believe that the team we put on the field can still achieve that [100-medal] goal,” USOC executive Jim Scherr says. “Even if we lose a few athletes between now and the games.”

Fast forward to Greece. The Dream Team flops. Marion Jones is shut out. USA baseball fails to qualify. The fastest man and woman in the world — sprinters Tim Montgomery and Kelli White — are left off the Olympic roster in the wake of the scandal surrounding doping at the Bay Area Lab Co-op (BALCO).

Oh, and American athletes finish with 103 medals, topping the gold and overall medal charts for a third consecutive Summer Olympics.

“The first thing most Americans do when they’re watching the Olympics is to check the medal count,” says sports psychologist Trevor Moawad, who has worked with the U.S. national soccer team. “As long as we’re winning, everything’s OK. We may not be the biggest rowing fans. But we still want to be the best at it.”

So it goes for the United States, the globe’s reigning sports superpower.

In a world obsessed with sweat — British soccer star David Beckham might be better-known than the pope — America’s athletic fixation inhabits a league of its own. Plus a few dozen more, counting lacrosse, bowling and professional wrestling.

One big reason the rest of this wide world looks so “American,” even when so many other nations root against our government, is the far-flung dominance of our sports and star athletes. This series examines nonmilitary, nonpolitical aspects of America’s pervasive influence across the globe — from democratic ideals and entrepreneurial ingenuity to language, sports and popular culture — and some of the consequences and repercussions.

In Washington, the joke goes, the Redskins’ quarterback holds the second-most important job in town, just behind George W. Bush. That may be misunderestimating matters.

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