What is going on with the USA and this years olympics?

Question

Track & Field, Soccer, Softball, Boxing, Wrestling, gymnastics! all the sports we should dominate in, we're not doing well at all! China is killing in gold medals!? Is this the future of the olympics? Is it a sign of a greater changing tide?

Answer 1

Doping tests are tougher.  Less US drug cheats = less gold medals for US.

Let's not forget that last few Olympics, US cheats have been stripped of several Olympic medals (Marion Jones et al).

But don't worry, being 2nd on the gold medal tally is still a good achievement lol .

Answer 2

Competition gets tougher, Countries get stronger.

Did you really expect a single country would consistently dominate the Olympics?

Times have changed.  

Answer 3

As for soccer, wrestling, judo, etc, the US isn't expected to do so well in those. They aren't popular sports in the USA.

The US wouldn't have done well in swimming either if it weren't for freak-of-nature michael phelps happening to be on the team.

I can tell you as a track fan exactly why the US failed at athletics this year: they didn't care about it enough. NBC bought the broadcasting rights for the entire olympics, leased out a few minor sports to cable channels and released live online streams of a few, but stubbornly refused to show any track or gymnastic events live. It's rumored that a few things were shown live on the east coast, but those were mostly repeats of the prime-time tapes with the "live" icon left on the screen to fool people. There was absolutely no live track, probably no gymnastics, on the west coast at all. That includes all three Usain Bolt world records and both US baton drops.

Where has the outcry been from the American public demanding NBC stop its arrogance and show the events live, as was done from Seoul in 1988? Nowhere. Every real track fan in the US including me has been outraged, but unfortunately the vast majority of Americans had never even heard of someone like Walter Dix or Nick Symmonds before the Olympics began, and were content to see tapes of the events.

There is nothing more demoralizing to an Olympic athlete than knowing that they don't have millions of fans at home watching them live. Maybe 5 percent at most of the fans in the bird's nest were from the US. It was not home turf. That is a negative to an athlete's performance in a situation where you need them to be at their best.

Bottom line, if Americans don't care enough about athletics to demand seeing it live to support the athletes, then the country doesn't deserve to win. Other countries take track far more seriously than the US does - like Jamaica, Britain and Russia. That they've been doing the winning there is only justice.

As for gymnastics, that was mostly not shown live at all. On the US west coast none of it was. There's no excuse. Beijing is in nearly the same time zone as Seoul, and there was plenty of live coverage from Seoul in 1988. From Sydney too.

Americans will have to come to grips with the fact that as long as they give so much attention to football, basketball and baseball, they won't be going on gold runs in sports like track and gymnastics. Or diving. Or soccer. Or handball. Or table tennis.

Answer 4

the only reason china is winning is because they focused on the sports where they could win the most gold easily. china had a better plan on how to win the most gold medals. if you really think about it china beat us in the sports where the US sucks in.

Answer 5

Wait what? We did pretty good in tack and field (won the decathalon, which is widley respected as the 'greatest athlete in the world'). Swimming is always something we dominate. We did. We won the womens soccer gold.. that's pretty good (even though we typically aren't supposed to win that either) I don't know how you figure we should dominate in the gymnastics (we never have) But I think Our girls probably had one of the biggest medal hauls for the US in gymnastics all time. Nastia alone had 5 medals.

What about fencing? Now there is a place we are not expected to win but won big... funny you leave that out..

We really only preformed poorly at track this year. Even that wasn't a total wash though. Just not as good as they could have. We've never been real 'dominant in boxing or wrestlng. I don't see how you figure we should be cleaning up there. People don't even CARE about boxing in this country anymore. When was the lat time you saw greco roman wrestling on TV in America?

Softball? How do you figure we should dominate that? We did get silver right? The team that beat them is another team that is expected to win: japan. It's not like they didn't shut out everybody on the way to the title games. They could not have been more dominant (only if they had won the last game).

We have collected more medals  in this Olympics than any other country BY FAR. We have racked up more medals than countries 3 times our size in population. America had a GREAT games this year. It's probably been a long time since we've brought home this many medals.

We actually increased our medal count from Athens and the games here aren't even over yet. (That's right we did BETTER in BEIJING than in ATHENS.)You have a weird sense of success ,based on unrealistic view of what American 'should be' winning. Americans have had a VERY good Olympics in general. Better than Athens that's for sure.... I hope the trend does continue. If it does, next time around we could have150 or more. The only great tide of change this points to is that for the foreseeable future it's gonna be China and America taking home more than 70% of the available medals. I say this because while China increased it medal haul significantly, they did so without taking any away from the Americans who actually also increased there medal haul over Athens.(The US is actually in a position to take home the more medals than they have since 1992).  The Chinese medal increases were born on the back of other countries who had sub-par games... most notably Russia.  It's a shame for some of other countries that don't have the population and resources to compete, but still have very good athletes. With both superpowers improving like they are. It's gonna be the Chinese-American games for the next few decades. Sorry other countries.

Answer 6

Actually,every host country will have break-through in Olympic game historically.As china got the second place of gold medal in Grecce,so it is nature to expect china to get NO.1 in gold medal.And the future of Olmpic game as far as USA are concerned ,all depends on how much attention they had paid on Olympic.To be honest,though china got so many gold medals , USA is still the most competitive one in many sports like swimming, track,and basketball.

Answer 7

I think the medal count is impotent, but the most impotent of Olympic is to promote the sports. USA is a strong country in sport no matter how many gold medal it gets. For China gets more gold medal in this Olympic, it only meant that they prepared well for this Olympic and it is their first time hosting the game. Also they have the home advantage.

Yes, USA dominates in some sports, like swimming. There is nothing wrong getting a silver in Softball; and more silver/brown medals in track fields. I like to watch a more competitive game in sports. If one is always dominated, it won't be any excitement to watch any more.

For gymnastics, it used to be dominated by Russian and Romania. now it looks most are by China and USA.

Answer 8

Soccer - I thought it was usually won by South American/African nations.

Boxing - Doesn't Cuba win alot of medals there usually?

Track & Field - You uys usually make your surge to #1 on the medals, but this olympics I guess you didn't do as well as you could have.

Gymnastics - I think if anyone underachieved it was russia.