U.S. Should Shine in Athens

U.S. athletes ought to take home at least 100 medals from next year’s Athens Olympics, U.S. Olympic Committee officials said Tuesday, proclaiming that USOC management turmoil and budget woes this year should not detract from the medal count.

The U.S. team won the medal count at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 with 97, and in Atlanta in 1996 with 101. Its best performance in Games not boycotted was in 1992 in Barcelona, 108 medals. That year, the unified team of former Soviet republics won the medal count, with 111. The U.S. record, set at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, boycotted by the Soviet Union and other communist countries, is 174 medals.

The projection of at least 100 next year in Athens may be conservative. Swimming, track and field and wrestling look to be strong, and such sports as shooting, equestrian, rowing, boxing, gymnastics and volleyball could produce multiple medals.

“We think we can go higher [than 100] with good performances,” said Jim Scherr, the USOC’s chief of sport performance.

The projections are being made as the USOC labors to emerge from the most challenging months it has experienced in the 25 years since Congress gave it responsibility for assembling the U.S. team. A task force appointed by the U.S. Senate is due Thursday to issue a report aimed at restructuring the USOC. A second panel, an internal USOC commission, is also due shortly to issue its own reform report.

The separate reform panels were launched after the chief executive, president and several others resigned earlier this year amid political infighting sparked by a conflict-of-interest inquiry targeting the CEO, Lloyd Ward.

The USOC also has been wrestling with a budget gap recently estimated at $14 million. Officials said Tuesday they figure to make up $13 million of that, partly through the layoff of perhaps a dozen staffers, a reduction in magazine subscriptions and a mandate that most employee travel be done on coach-section airline tickets.

Revised USOC budget figures project revenue of $488 million for the 2001-2004 Olympic cycle.

Through it all, senior USOC figures have said that athlete preparations for Athens have continued undisturbed.

Last year, U.S. athletes recorded 214 top-eight finishes in world championships or major international competition. Russians finished with 177. So did Germans. Chinese recorded 127.

The U.S. focus is to turn as many of those 214 into medals -- amid a quiet revolution in the way the USOC funnels money to the athletes and to what are called the “national governing bodies,” or NGBs, the federations that oversee the various Olympic sports.

In the 1997-2000 cycle, for instance, the USOC directed $115 million to the summer sport NGBs and their athletes. Of that, $16 million was “performance-based” discretionary funding, the idea being to give a top-eight athlete an extra push, and thus onto the medals podium.

For the 2001-04 cycle, the total has gone up to $130 million -- of which $67 million is performance-based.

“We think the plan is in place,” Scherr said.