Maybe This Time We'll Win
More American-friendly sports and more money increase the odds
Americans abhor also-rans, a fact that explains why second-stringers are rarely featured in Nike commercials. It also explains the outrage caused by the country's lukewarm showing a decade ago at the 1988 Winter Olympics. The United States brought home a scant six medals from Calgary, its worst total in 22 years. Oblivious to the official Olympic message--"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part"--the nation cried out for the development of more American top-tier skiers and lugers.
New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was put in charge of a special committee convened to end the mediocrity. "If winning wasn't important, how come every newspaper prints the medal count on the front page every day?" he asked. A year later, the group issued a report stressing that "winning medals must always be the primary goal" and mandating massive financial support for Olympic hopefuls, lest the nation suffer future embarrassments at the hands of Finland or the Netherlands, both of which bested America's team in 1988.
Now, on the eve of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, the United States finally is poised to turn in a performance suited to its superpower status. United States Olympic Committee officials predict a best-case scenario of 20 to 22 medals, a substantial increase over the previous record of 13 medals, set in 1994.
Money is not the sole factor behind America's leap into the winter sports elite: The U.S. team will benefit from changes in the games' lineup. Since the debacle of 1988, the number of Winter Olympics events has grown by almost 50 percent, with 22 medal events added since Calgary. And in all but a few of these sports, the United States is a prime contender for spots on the victory podium. Freestyle skiing, short-track speed skating, and snowboarding--all fairly recent additions to the winter games--raise America's chances of medaling, though soon after Nagano many of these newfangled events are likely to lapse back into obscurity for the next four years. "Some of these sports are sort of inbred," admits USOC spokesman Mike Moran. "They're phenomena or curiosities."
Dollars showered upon competitors post-Calgary have led to improvements by athletes in some traditional winter sports. The abolition of the $2,500-per-athlete direct-aid limit, for example, and the end of mandatory amateurism--which prohibited prize money--have allowed once cash-starved Olympians to dedicate themselves full time to training. And the USOC, its coffers fattened by TV-rights fees, has generously doled out its loot: The organization awarded nearly $6 million directly to 568 winter athletes in 1997. Backed by USOC money, the doubles team of Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin has a good shot at America's first-ever luge medal.
Gobs of money flowing through the U.S. Olympic movement, however, is no guarantee of better results. A combination of bum knees, inexperience, and stellar European adversaries will make the going rough for America's alpine skiers and long-track speed skaters, traditionally two of the country's strongest winter sports. "We lost a lot of great athletes, and speed skating was the hardest hit," says the USOC's Moran, alluding to the retirement of five-time gold medalist Bonnie Blair. "Then skiing received a jolt with the injuries to [1994 medalists] Picabo Street and Tommy Moe." And, as always, America's cross-country skiers, ski jumpers, and biathletes will languish far behind the powerful Russians and Scandinavians.
A new generation of Olympians competing in other sports will make up for some of these shortcomings. Some freestyle-skiing observers are whispering about multiple medals for the U.S. women's moguls team. The event, which debuted as a medal sport at the 1992 games in Albertville, France, involves competitors schussing over large bumps and occasionally performing midair stunts for style points. American veterans Liz McIntyre and Donna Weinbrecht already account for a silver and a gold, and three-time Olympian Ann Battelle zooms into Nagano fresh from a remarkable World Cup season. Aerials, the hot-dogging acrobatic show that constitutes the other half of freestyle skiing, could provide another medalist or two in the forms of Eric Bergoust and Nikki Stone.
American short-track skaters will run neck and neck with the powerful South Koreans. Added to the games six years ago, the sport bears more than a passing resemblance to roller derby; jockeying for position in dense packs, short-trackers have been known to throw an elbow or two. Double gold medalist Cathy Turner, 35, who parlayed her on-ice success into a dubious B-film debut--she costarred with Leave It to Beaver's Jerry Mathers in a low-budget vampire flick--returns to aid the always strong women's relay team.
Snowboarders will vie for gold for the first time in Nagano. World champion (and U.S. News diarist) Sondra Van Ert is a threat in the giant slalom, as is Mike Jacoby for the men. The half-pipe competition, in which boarders perform stunts along a U-shaped corridor, looks wide open on the men's side because of three-time world champion Terje Haakonsen's unilateral boycott of the games (the 23-year-old Norwegian criticized Olympic officials--whom he called "the mafia"--for indulging in luxuries while "the athletes live in barracks in the woods"). Haakonsen's absence leaves the door open for Americans Todd Richards and Ross Powers to seize top spots.
Women's ice hockey, another sport making its first Olympic appearance, is a good bet to yield either a gold or a silver for the United States; recent victories against world champion Canada indicate the more precious metal is the likely prize. Men's ice hockey has been a part of the Olympics since 1920, but this year it's a whole different game--for the first time, National Hockey League professionals will take part. With a roster packed with high-priced talent rather than career minor leaguers, it shouldn't take too much luck for the United States to medal.
Many Americans, of course, would swap a dozen medals in other sports for a single women's figure skating gold. Fortunately for such fans, only a major realignment of heaven and Earth will prevent either Michelle Kwan or Tara Lipinski from becoming America's next ice princess. For the United States, the addition of a new Olympic medalist to the figure-skating pantheon may well be the highlight of a medal-rich winter games.
This story appears in the February 9, 1998 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.