U.S. Is as Good as Goal

For the 538 American athletes who went souvenir shopping these last two weeks in Greece, hunting for trinkets cast in gold, silver and bronze, this is how they made out:

They came ... well, everyone did except a dozen or so top-flight NBA players, who viewed these Games as a no-win proposition and, sure enough, they called it right.

They saw ... and were pleasantly surprised by the acute shortage of “Yankee Go Home” banners at any of the 40 Olympic venues.

They conquered.

Well, kind of.

Heading into today’s final day of competition, the United States has reached the U.S. Olympic Committee’s stated medal goal of 100.

Appropriately enough, the U.S. hit the century mark Saturday night when the underachieving men’s basketball team scraped out the bronze medal against Lithuania.

With 100 medals -- and at least one more to come today in boxing, wrestling and volleyball -- the United States’ final 2004 medal output should eclipse U.S. totals in Sydney (97 medals), Atlanta (101) and Seoul (94), and get close to Barcelona (108).

“Coming into these Games, we knew that reaching 100 medals would be an ambitious goal,” USOC Chief Executive Jim Scherr said. “But we also knew that with the talent and depth on this Olympic team, it was possible....

“The level of competition at these Games has been outstanding, and this will go down as one of the greatest performances ever by a U.S. Olympic team.”

Olympic historian David Wallechinsky sees it differently.

“If you judge success by gold medals won, this will be our worst performance in history,” said Wallechinsky, author of “The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics.”

Through 15 days of competition, the United States had won 34 gold medals.

“The previous worst was Sydney, where we won 40 gold medals in 300 events,” Wallechinsky said. “Now that’s more medals than we’ve won in other games, but I’m going by percentage of gold medals won.”

The United States’ gold-medal winning percentage in Sydney was 13.3%

The Athens Olympic sports program featured 301 events. If the United States’ gold medal total holds at 34, its gold-medal percentage would be 11.3%.

Analyzing the United States’ performance, Wallechinsky was struck by two story lines.

“About half of our gold medals have been won by athletes in two sports -- men’s track and field and men’s swimming,” he said. “That kind of concentration is quite unusual in large countries.”

Through Saturday, male swimmers and track and field athletes had accounted for 15 of the United States’ 34 gold medals. American men won nine gold medals in swimming. If the U.S. men’s swim team competed as a nation, through Saturday, it would have equaled the gold-medal totals of France and Italy and surpassed those of South Korea, Britain and Greece.

Swimmer Michael Phelps won six gold medals -- four individually, two on relay teams. By himself, he outperformed the entire Olympic teams of the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Spain and Canada.

The other story line?

“Aside from the fantastic success of the women’s softball and women’s basketball teams, it’s been the underachievement of the American women,” Wallechinsky said. “I don’t have a reason for it. I don’t know why. But there’s a big gap. The women swimmers and the women track and field athletes didn’t come close to what they did in Sydney.”

Only two American women won individual swim gold medals -- Natalie Coughlin in the 100-meter backstroke and Amanda Beard in the 200 breaststroke. The U.S. women also won a gold medal in the 800 freestyle relay.

In track and field, American women won only two gold medals -- Joanna Hayes in the 100-meter hurdles and a team triumph in the 1,600-meter relay.

Marion Jones won three golds by herself in Sydney, along with two bronze. Four years later, Jones competed only in two events and didn’t come close to medaling. She placed fifth in the long jump and failed to complete a baton exchange after running the second leg of the 400-meter relay.

Other potential gold medals lost included: Tom Pappas in the decathlon, Allen Johnson in the 110-meter hurdles, Stacy Dragila in the women’s pole vault, John Godina or Adam Nelson in men’s shotput, Rulon Gardner in Greco-Roman wrestling, Brendan Hansen in the two men’s breaststroke events, Andy Roddick in men’s tennis singles, Venus Williams in women’s tennis singles, Bob and Mike Bryan in men’s tennis doubles, women’s water polo, both 400-meter sprint relays and men’s basketball.

Not to mention baseball. The United States won the gold medal in Sydney but failed to qualify for the Athens tournament.

There were a few surprising gold-medal pickups: men’s gymnastics, men’s eights rowing, Mariel Zagunis in women’s fencing, Matthew Emmons and Kim Rhode in shooting.

American athletes were generally well-received in Athens.

There was a smattering of jeering whistles when the U.S. team was introduced during the opening ceremony. Shawn Crawford, Bernard Williams and Justin Gatlin were booed by Greek fans after sweeping the 200-meter sprint medals, but that was largely a reference to Costas Kenteris, the Greek 200-meter champion in Sydney who withdrew from the Athens Games because of a drug-related controversy.

And Saturday in taekwondo, American Steven Lopez was booed during a first-round victory over Raid Rasheed of Iraq.

“I expected that the crowd wouldn’t take my side,” Lopez said. “The USA is the best country in the world. We have the power, that’s why people are envious.

“Wherever we are playing, even if it is the world championships or the Olympic Games, people want us to lose. I just hoped that in the Olympic Games, politics would be out of the picture.”

But overall, crowds were polite to American teams and athletes. They might not have rooted for the giant in red, white and blue -- underdogs were extremely popular in Athens -- but they weren’t openly hostile either.

That was partly because American athletes were better behaved than in past Olympics. Concerned about crowd reaction to the U.S. team in Greece, the USOC and the individual sports federations counseled athletes before the Games, emphasizing that comportment was as important as competition.

Craig Masback, CEO of USA Track and Field, said he was pleased with the conduct of the U.S. track team, much of it new to the Olympic Games.

“It might sound like a cliche,” he said, “but from what I’ve read and what I’ve seen, these are good people. They’re talented, motivated athletes, and not by design, but what they did, they sent a message.”

Through Saturday, U.S. track and field athletes had won a total of 24 medals, surpassing the 17-to-20 goal federation officials set before the Games.

“There’s a lot of levels of satisfaction and it’s not just medals,” Masback said. “It’s very exciting to increase the number of medals and to have the leadership of those medals come from new faces.”

Masback conceded that “not everything went right. Allen Johnson fell. Gail Devers got hurt. Stacy Dragila didn’t do as well as she would have liked.”

However, he added, “Almost in every case, somebody else did something [to balance things out]. [Hurdles silver medalist] Terrence Trammell brought his season together at the right time. [Decathlon silver winner] Bryan Clay did so well. Joanna Hayes. There was a lot of character.”

The gold-medal count could have been better, but in Wallechinsky’s view, the United States at the Olympics is “limited by our sports culture. If X% of the population has the ability to be a great athlete, they go into basketball, baseball, football or tennis. And that’s it.

“Other countries, top athletes become weightlifters or wrestlers or rowers. [Former Olympic rowing champion] Steve Redgrave is a hero in Great Britain. That’s not going to happen in the United States. If we have a great potential weightlifter or wrestler, he’s going to become an offensive lineman.”

Wallechinsky said he didn’t foresee that changing in the near future.

“Not at all,” he said. “The USOC can try their best to recruit promising athletes to these sports, but they’re still swimming against the tide.”

Times staff writers Helene Elliott and Alan Abrahamson contributed to this report.