Olympics 2012: For 5th straight Summer Games, U.S. will take home most medals

“For me, it’s not a competition in medal count against somebody else,” said U.S. decathlete Ashton Eaton, a gold medalist in London and the world-record holder in his event. “I think if you just are cheering your country on and you’re just trying to beat whoever is in front of you in your competition, the medals take care of themselves, really.”

Probst gave high praise on Saturday to the way London organizers put the Olympics together, and a number of U.S. athletes also raved about the logistics — from buses running on time to the quality of the Olympic village.

Probst, however, took one good-natured shot at London organizing committee head Sebastian Coe, who said earlier this year that he expected China to take away more medals than anyone else.

“The only thing that Seb got slightly wrong was he predicted that we would come in behind China in the medal count,” Probst said. “And I told him back in April that we were going to work really, really hard to prove him wrong.”

So this medals win might be a bit sweeter for the Americans than the most recent ones that came at Atlanta, Sydney, Athens and Beijing.

“The American public has high expectations for our Olympic team and our Olympic athletes,” Probst said. “There was a lot of speculation about where we would finish as a team. And a lot of people predicted that we might finish second and some even suggested third. So we’re extremely proud of what our team has accomplished and what our athletes have accomplished.”

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