Sour Grapes Make U.S. a Whine Country : Controversy: Sore losing has reached almost-epidemic proportions with the American team.

No matter how articulate they might seem, there is one word that apparently is not in the vocabulary of many U.S. athletes competing in the Summer Olympics.

“Congratulations.”

Far removed from the days when losing tennis players jumped over the net to extend a hand or a pat on the back to the victors, sore losing has reached almost-epidemic proportions with the U.S. team here.

Could it be that the Olympic ideal today is not whether you win or lose but what you can find to blame?

For swimming and track and field athletes, the scapegoat has been the banned, performance-enhancing drugs allegedly used by their conquerors. For boxers, wrestlers, gymnasts and judoists, it has been the judging.

For U.S. volleyball players, it was the enforcement of a penalty rule. Players then shaved their heads in a visible sign of protest.

For tennis players, it has been the slow courts, long matches and the lack of air conditioning in the athletes’ village. Badminton players complained about the lack of air conditioning in their arena.

But to some observers, the only thing not cool is the attitude of the U.S. athletes, the Scream Team.

“We feel that unless Americans can dominate everything, they are not happy,” said Mike Fennell, president of Jamaica’s Olympic Committee.

Fennell was reacting to an accusation by U.S. sprinter Gwen Torrence of Decatur, Ga., that one of the women who finished ahead of her in Saturday’s 100-meter final was propelled by drugs. Torrence, who finished fourth, said she was not referring to the winner, Gail Devers of Van Nuys, Calif., or the runner-up, Jamaican Juliet Cuthbert.

That left only the bronze medalist, Russian Irina Privalova, who shrugged off the charge.

“Everyone reacts differently to winning and losing,” she said.

The fact that some U.S. athletes do not react as well to losing as those from other countries should not be that surprising, said John MacAloon, a University of Chicago anthropologist and Olympic movement expert, considering the country’s post-Cold War search for its place in the “new world order.”

Excuses are not confined to the international sports arena. For instance, when Toyotas and Hondas outsell cars manufactured by U.S. companies, MacAloon pointed out, domestic car makers blame free trade violations instead of crediting the Japanese for making better products.

“It’s part of a larger issue, having to do with how we understand ourselves in a hierarchal order,” he said. “We tend to look at the world in terms of who’s on top. But we are moving into a cooperative phase of an integrated global system.

“In sports, this translates into the increasing equality of competition in many sports among many countries. This is an adjustment we have to make, and our young people have to understand that they’re not going to have it as easy in international competition as they once did.”

This, however, is not an entirely new phenomenon. In one of the most famous episodes of questionable sportsmanship, the U.S. men’s basketball team in the 1972 Summer Olympics at Munich, Germany, refused to accept their silver medals after losing a controversial championship game to the Soviets. Until last week, when a Russian weightlifter walked away from the victory ceremony for personal reasons, they were the only athletes ever to reject their medals.

Complaining about judging in subjective sports is as old as the Olympic movement itself and, in fairness to U.S. athletes, hardly confined to one country. Four years ago at Seoul, South Korean coaches and officials stormed the ring in pursuit of a New Zealand referee they believed had robbed them.

But the United States seems to be at the top of the whine list this year.

Mike Moran, spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee, said that is a misperception resulting from the fact that the U.S. media corps, the largest contingent here, has more access to U.S. athletes than allowed by any other national Olympic committee.

Insisting that ungracious athletes are the exception rather than the rule, he said, “In a field of flowers, you’re going to come up with a few weeds.”

The USOC’s executive director, Harvey Schiller, said that media representatives send mixed messages to the athletes, asking them to bare their souls and then criticizing them if they do not like the responses.

“The same things we are critical of are what we stand for--the ability to say what we want,” Schiller said.

In some cases, the athletes’ complaints may be legitimate.

After losing a close decision last week to Spain’s Rafael Lozana, boxer Eric Griffin of Houston, a two-time world amateur champion, accused the judges of bias. “I think the judges have something against the American team,” he said. “It’s some kind of prejudice.”

Although Moran said that was not an opinion shared by the USOC, he agreed with many at ringside that Griffin was “blatantly jobbed” by the judges.

It might also be irresponsible to completely dismiss athletes’ suspicions concerning drugs. When the East German women dominated the swimming competition in the 1976 Summer Olympics at Montreal, U.S. athletes accused them of enhancing their strength with banned anabolic steroids.

Particularly vociferous was the United States’ Shirley Babashoff, who earned no sympathy from the U.S. media. She did earn a nickname: “Surly Shirley.” She, however, was vindicated when former East German swimming officials, upon their country’s unification with West Germany, admitted to doping their top athletes.

“The doping issue is very complex,” MacAloon said. “Complaining about air conditioning, that’s another thing.”

One USOC official, who asked not to be identified, said that U.S. team leaders do nothing to discourage the complaining, thereby encouraging it.

“I think the whole thing is reflective of the attitude we have higher up,” he said. “We never tell the athletes: ‘Cut it out. You were beaten by a better athlete. Work hard and you’ll do better next time.’ Instead, we give them a sympathetic ear.

“We spoil our athletes. We give them the best of everything. When you look around at what the Russians and the Croatians and others have, do we really have any reasons to complain? We need to educate our athletes to stop and look around.”

Also to blame, MacAloon said, is pressure put on the athletes to win by the media and sponsors, which causes them to search for scapegoats when they don’t.

“Shirley Babashoff left Montreal with a handful of silver medals, and she was inconsolable,” said Tom Callahan, a columnist for the Washington Post. “If you’re an American who finishes second, you’re nothing in the media. You’re less than nothing.”