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对于金牌大项游泳来说，孙杨是中国队一个难得的亮点。
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着伦敦奥运会的临近，是时候让星条旗在空中飘扬、穿上我们的红白蓝国旗色短裤了！四年前的北京奥运会，中国成为1992年以来首个奥运金牌数超过美国的国家。四年之后，《华尔街日报》对伦敦奥运会的奖牌预测显示，星条旗在赛场上升起的次数将再次超过其他参赛国家，同时美国的奖牌总数也有望连续在五届夏季奥运会上蝉联榜首。
中国在2008年北京奥运会的金牌角逐中拔得头筹，这本应预示着一个奥运超级大国的诞生──一个拥有13亿人口、运动员的训练由政府资助的大国。即便是在美国奥委会(U.S. Olympic Committee)位于科罗拉多斯普林斯(Colorado Springs)的总部，认为中国将在2012年获得最多金牌和奖牌的人也越来越多。
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参加伦敦奥运会的美国代表队是史上最强阵容之一，其中既有在国际上名声显赫的巨星如游泳选手菲尔普斯等，也有目前还鲜为人知但表现抢眼的青少年运动员。
我们的预测体系考虑到了很多基本信息，例如对专家的采访以及运动员在最近的国内和国际比赛上的表现。我们不仅仅是指出每项赛事的第一、第二和第三名就算了事，而是根据模型得出热门奖牌人选的获胜概率，然后通过这些概率来预测可能性最大的结果。
例如，根据我们的计算，自1992年以来便一直独揽奥运金牌的美国女篮赢得金牌的胜算是80%，而位居其次的队伍的胜算只有10%。再以塞尔维亚网球明星诺瓦克•德约科维奇(Novak Djokovic)为例，他若要拿下金牌，得要在与罗杰•费德勒(Roger Federer)及英国本土选手安迪•穆雷(Andy Murray)的激烈竞争中获胜，因此他赢得冠军的概率只有40%。在得出这些概率之后，我们请来体育比赛精算师、Baseball Info Solutions网站的所有人约翰•杜文(John Dewan)对伦敦奥运会进行了1,000次模拟。
结果非常明显：在这1,000次模拟中，美国有998次获得最多奖牌或是与他国并列获得最多奖牌。关于金牌的角逐则多了一些不确定性，其中美国获胜的次数是746次，中国是304次。此外，还有57次是美国与他国并列金牌榜榜首，另有7次是俄罗斯意外登顶榜首。
有些比赛的参赛队伍的水平不相上下，难以预测它们的胜负。在今年，开幕式还未拉开帷幕就有好戏上演，美国女足与颇具实力的法国女足被分在了同一个小组，将再次上演2011年女足世界杯半决赛的一幕。我们预测美国队将能依靠阿比•瓦姆巴赫(Abby Wambach)和亚历克斯•摩根(Alex Morgan)这个得分绝杀二人组从小组出线并获得奖牌，这是一场不容错过的比赛。
此外，男子110米栏的决战同样也将难分胜负。中国的刘翔、古巴的戴龙•罗伯斯(Dayron Robles)以及美国的杰森•理查德森(Jayson Richardson)都有赢得金牌和创造世界纪录的实力。我们预测刘翔和罗伯斯的争夺将非常胶着。此外，恐怕只有傻子才会错过男子200米自由泳的比赛，我们预计美国选手瑞恩•罗切特(Ryan Lochte)将仅仅以极其微弱的优势击败法国选手雅尼克•阿涅尔(Yannick Agnel)。
至于个人运动项目，根据我们的预测，美国将如往常一样在奖牌数量众多的游泳和田径项目中占据统治地位。这两个运动项目可能将给美国贡献57块奖牌，约占美国奖牌总数的53%。游泳运动员迈克尔•菲尔普斯(Michael Phelps)可能难以重现当年斩获八枚金牌的雄风，但是应该还是能够轻松拿下五枚金牌，总共应能获得七枚奖牌。
中国赢得的奖牌更多地依赖于高强度的训练，而非与生具来的运动天赋。中国运动员在不知疲倦的专心训练能够带来成功的运动项目中表现最佳。例如，中国可能会在举重（预计会获得八枚奖牌）、跳水（九枚奖牌）和乒乓球（六枚奖牌）这些项目中获得较多奖牌。在2008年北京奥运会上，中国在羽毛球和射击比赛中获得了六枚奖牌，但在游泳和田径比赛中只获得两枚奖牌。得益于长距离游泳健将孙杨的出现，中国的游泳成绩有所提高，我们预计孙杨有望获得1,500米和400米自由泳的冠军。
Associated Press
东道主选手莫•法拉赫可能获得5,000米和10,000米双料冠军，从而有望提升英国的奖牌总数。
境况处于另一极端的是牙买加。在地球上跑得最快的人──乌塞恩•博尔特(Usain Bolt)及世界顶尖的短跑军团的带领下，牙买加有望斩获十多枚奖牌，其中有四枚是金牌。对于一个只有290万人口的国家来说，这是一个不俗的成绩。
偶发因素：脚踝疼痛与毫秒之差
如果美国确实在本届奥运会上重新登顶，时间上恰逢国内经济发展缓慢、美国民众感觉本国超级大国地位不比从前。此外，此时也正值美国总统大选期间，两位候选人均可将这个成果为己所用。奥巴马可以说这个胜利是在其任期内赢得的，而米特•罗姆尼(Mitt Romney)则可把他曾担任2002年盐湖城冬奥会组委会主席的资历拿来说事。
当然，我们所预测的美国的成功要受到世界级比赛中偶发因素的制约。在这样的比赛中，胜败就在于脚踝疼痛这样的事情或者百分之几秒的时间差。比如说，美国游泳运动员菲尔普斯和蜜茜•富兰克林(Missy Franklin)有可能帮助美国获得十几枚金牌，但是万一他们得了流感，结果就是空手而归。
然而，如果我们的预测都成为了现实，美国的成功可能预示着其在未来将更能占据主导地位。美国奥委会不享受联邦政府的任何资助，这时候没有什么事情比看见本国队员获胜更能让美国民众为了奥运而掏腰包了。
“我们的表现越好，就越能募集到更多资金，”美国奥委会首席执行长斯科特•布莱克姆恩(Scott Blackmun)说道。
奥运会主办国的奥运战绩往往会提高，比如中国在2008年北京奥运会的成绩就大幅提高。除了具有在本土作战的心理优势之外，主办国还会投资基础设施、训练和运动员的培养。中国就对“119工程”投入了大量人力和财力，该工程把目标瞄准了中国传统弱项的119枚金牌上，例如游泳、拳击和田径运动。最终中国在2008年获得了51枚金牌，奖牌总数为100枚，高于2004年的32枚金牌和63枚奖牌。
自2009年以来，英国已花费近5亿美元用以资助训练和运动员培养计划。本报预测，英国代表团将在今年赢取22枚金牌，奖牌总数为66枚。这相比八年前是一个巨大的进步，当时英国只获得九枚金牌，总共获得31枚奖牌。
美国自1996年以来便未举办过夏季奥运会，而且至少要到2024年才有机会举办。美国对运动员的投入相对很少，美国奥委会每年平均提供1.062亿美元用于训练和招待冬季及夏季奥运会的运动员以及维护其位于科罗拉多斯普林斯、纽约州普莱西德湖(Lake Placid)和加州丘拉维斯塔(Chula Vista)的训练中心。
尽管美国奥委会拥有最终选定奥运人选的权力，但是它能够直接控制的资源和运动员非常之少。培养未来的奥运选手主要由每个运动项目的国家管理机构，比如美国田径协会(USA Track & Field)和美国游泳协会(USA Swimming)负责。在大多数情况下，这些组织主要依靠美国的大学、中小学和娱乐运动体系来发掘人才。
美国教育部(U.S. Department of Education)的备案文件显示，在2010至2011年这一有数据可查的最新学年，美国高校的体育院系花费了121亿美元，中学体育部门的花费还要高出数十亿美元。美国家长也为此付出很多，为了把他们的孩子培养成下一个瓦姆巴赫或是娜斯佳•柳金(Nastia Luikin)而掏了数亿美元的腰包。
中国的情况则与此不同，其公办体校会到各社区筛选，找个子奇高的人打篮球、关节灵活的则选去学习跳水。国家会负责他们直至成年之后的训练。
美国前奥委会主席比尔•马丁(Bill Martin)认为，这种体制在美国行不通。“我们国家就没有这种让一个机构来控制体育运动的DNA，”马丁说道，“我们的体制的魅力在于奥运选手可以来自任何一个地方，而且确实也是如此。”
我们所预计的中国奖牌数量的下降表明了一些问题，比如奥运主办国在主办奥运后往往会泄劲、中国培养运动员的方法有一个更基本的弱点──体校数量减少。中国官方媒体《环球时报》(Global Times)报道称，由于中国蓬勃发展的经济为农村的年轻人创造了更多就业选择，过去10年来中国体校的数量减少了40%。在过去，农村家庭把体校视为长期饭票或是提高社会地位的唯一途径。如今，由于其他选择的出现，这些家庭更有可能会拒绝让孩子进体校。
中国体育事务官员拒绝就本文置评，但密苏里大学(University of Missouri)圣路易斯分校的人类学教授苏珊•布朗奈尔(Susan Brownell)称，中国“正慢慢朝着与其他国家更为一致的体育制度迈进，速度非常缓慢。”布朗奈尔撰写过众多有关中国体育制度的文章。
搜寻人才
美国体育制度的潜能在于它能够让最大范围的运动员获得资金和机会。“我们有这种俱乐部、教练和学校都在寻觅人才的竞争机制，”体育咨询公司赫利奥斯咨询有限公司(Helios Partners)首席执行长克里斯•威尔顿(Chris Welton)说，“如果你有运动天赋的话，在这个国家很难被埋没。”赫利奥斯公司与全球各地的奥运机构都有合作。
该体制基本上将训练事务交由运动员自己负责，迫使他们（以及他们的家长）迫切并积极地寻觅最好的教练并筹集资金来资助他们的训练。
杰西•威廉姆斯(Jesse Williams)是2006年全美大学生体育协会(NCAA)的跳高冠军，但是他在2008年北京奥运会上未进入决赛。当他的职业生涯继续停滞不前时，威廉姆斯换掉了教练，转而在堪萨斯州立大学(Kansas State University)接受克里夫•诺维托(Cliff Rovelto)的训练。诺维托改变了他的训练方案和跳高风格。后来威廉姆斯不再进行300米重复跑，如今他在大型比赛之前的跑步距离绝不会超过60米。他的训练方案集中于在全速跑向跳杆时，要在起跳之前的最后几步达到最快速度，整个脚部都要抓住地面，而不是还在踮着脚尖跑步时就突然起跳。
这些改变帮助威廉姆斯在去年夏季的韩国世界田径锦标赛上赢得金牌，如今他即将向伦敦进发。“我感觉自己都能跳过时报广场(Times Square)了，”最近他在接受采访时如是说道。
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美国分散型的培养方法造就了像加布里埃尔•道格拉斯这样的精英运动员。
如今，道格拉斯已经是美国奥运体操代表队的一员，其队友包括2011年世界体操锦标赛的全能冠军乔婷•韦伯(Jordyn Wieber)(来自密歇根)以及金牌的有力竞争人选亚历山德拉•莱斯曼(Alexandra Raisman)(来自马萨诸塞州)。
这支队伍很有希望赢得伦敦奥运会的女子团体冠军，要是在八年前中国队正处于上升态势时，几乎没有人会做这样的预测吧。
美国体操协会(USA Gymnastics)主席史蒂夫•潘尼(Steve Penny)说，美国这种比较分散的训练方法创造了“一种拥有一个能源源不断将新人领进精英行列的渠道的体制。”
MATTHEW FUTTERMAN / LORETTA CHAO / GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
Time to unfurl Old Glory and break out the red, white and blue boxer shorts.
Four years after China became the first country since 1992 to win more Olympic gold medals than the U.S., The Wall Street Journal's medal projections for London suggest the Star-Spangled Banner will once again play more often than any other anthem.
And for the fifth consecutive Summer Games, the U.S. should finish atop the overall medal table.
China's victory in the gold-medal race in 2008 was supposed to herald the arrival of the newest Olympic superpower, a vast country with 1.3 billion people and a proven government-sponsored training program. Even at the U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters in Colorado Springs, there was a growing sense that China would win the most gold and overall medals in 2012.
Instead, London should vindicate America's decentralized and entrepreneurial approach to developing the world's best athletes. The Wall Street Journal's projections show Team U.S.A.'s 530 athletes should leave London with 40 gold medals and 108 overall, topping the Chinese, who are projected to collect 38 gold medals and 92 overall.
The Journal's forecasting system takes into account basic information such as interviews with experts and the performances of athletes in recent national and international competitions. But rather than simply anointing first-, second- and third-place finishers in each event and calling it a day, the model assigns probabilities to the top medal contenders, then uses those probabilities to project the most likely outcomes.
For instance, the U.S. women's basketball team, which hasn't lost a game at the Olympics since 1992, is an 80% favorite to win the gold by our count─while the next most likely winners come in at 10%. Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic, who has to prevail over stiff competition from Roger Federer and hometown favorite Andy Murray, has just a 40% chance for gold. After tallying those probabilities, we enlisted sports actuary John Dewan, owner of Baseball Info Solutions, to run 1,000 simulations of the Games.
The results were emphatic: The U.S. won or tied for the most medals 998 times. And while the gold-medal race was less certain, the U.S. won it 746 times to 304 for China. There were 57 ties and seven scenarios in which Russia was a surprise winner.
Some events were so close they were tough to handicap. This year, there's a cracker of a match before the Opening Ceremony even takes place, as the U.S. women's soccer team takes on a talented French side in a rematch of their 2011 World Cup semifinal. We expect the U.S. to survive on the strength of deadly scoring duo Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan, and to earn a medal, but the match shouldn't be missed.
Same goes for the showdown in the men's 110-meter hurdles, where China's Liu Xiang, Cuba's Dayron Robles, and Jayson Richardson of the U.S. are all capable of winning gold and setting a world record. Wall Street Journal projections have Xiang and Robles in a dead heat. And only a fool would miss the men's 200-meter freestyle, where American Ryan Lochte should beat France's Yannick Agnel by a fingernail, but not more.
As for individual sports disciplines, the predictions show the U.S. dominating where it usually does─in medal-rich swimming and track and field. Those two sports should account for 57 U.S. medals, or 53% of the U.S. haul. Swimmer Michael Phelps isn't chasing eight gold medals again, but he could easily win five gold and seven overall.
Chinese success in winning medals relies less on raw athletic talent than it does on intense training. The Chinese do best in the sorts of events where a tireless commitment to practice pays dividends. China, for example, should rack up medals in weightlifting (eight), diving (nine) and table tennis (six). In 2008, China won 16 medals in badminton and shooting and just two in swimming and track. Its swimming is improved, thanks to distance specialist Sun Yang, who is expected to win both the 1,500-meter and 400-meter freestyle races.
Britain's Olympic improvement should continue, too, with the country's hopes riding on a few key athletes, including distance runner Mo Farah, who may try to pull off the rare feat of winning both the 5,000- and 10,000-meter races. Meanwhile, Germany should continue to confound the experts, winning just 49 overall medals, far below what a country so populous, wealthy and successful at the Winter Olympics should.
On the other end of the spectrum: Jamaica. Led by Usain Bolt, the planet's fastest man, and the world's top sprint team, Jamaica should claim a dozen medals, four of them gold. Not bad for a country of just 2.9 million people.
Sore Ankles and Split Seconds
A return to U.S. Olympic supremacy would come at a time when the economy is lagging and when Americans are feeling somewhat less than superpower-like. It also arrives in the middle of a presidential race in which both candidates could use the outcome for their benefit: President Obama by noting that the triumph occurred on his watch and Mitt Romney by touting his credentials as the chief of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
Team U.S.A.'s projected success is subject to the whims of world-class athletic competition, of course─an environment where a sore ankle or a few hundredths of a second can make the difference between victory and defeat. Two American swimmers, Phelps and Missy Franklin, could help the U.S. win a dozen gold medals, or they could get the flu and leave empty-handed.
If probability becomes reality, however, a U.S. romp could presage more dominance in the future. The USOC receives no support from the federal government. But nothing gets Americans to reach into their pocketbooks on behalf of the Olympics more than seeing Americans win.
'The better we do, the more money we can raise,' says Scott Blackmun, chief executive of the USOC.
Olympic improvement tends to come with hosting the Games, as when China soared in 2008. Besides the psychological advantage of competing at home, host countries invest in facilities, coaching and athlete development. China poured money and effort into 'Project 119,' a program to target the 119 potential gold medals in sports where China was traditionally weak, such as swimming, boxing and athletics. The Chinese won 51 gold medals and 100 overall in 2008, up from 28 and 63 in 2004.
The British have spent nearly $500 million to fund training and athletic-development programs since 2009. The Journal projects that Team GB, as it is known, will win 22 gold medals and 66 overall this year, a vast improvement from eight years ago, when Britain won nine gold medals and 31 overall.
The U.S. hasn't hosted a Summer Olympics since 1996 and won't host another one until at least 2024. It spends relatively little on athletes. The USOC shells out on average $106.2 million a year to train and treat its winter and summer athletes and maintain its training centers in Colorado Springs, Lake Placid, N.Y., and Chula Vista, Calif.
However, while the USOC has the ultimate power of naming the country's Olympic team, it has relatively few resources and athletes under its direct control. The national governing body for each sport, such as USA Track & Field and USA Swimming, is largely responsible for developing future Olympians. In most cases, those groups rely largely on the U.S. collegiate, scholastic and recreational sports systems.
During the 2010-11 school year, the latest for which figures are available, U.S. college athletic departments spent $12.1 billion, according to U.S. Department of Education filings. High-school athletic departments spend several billion dollars more. U.S. parents dig deep also, spending hundreds of millions on training in hopes their kids become the next Abby Wambach or Nastia Luikin.
Compare that with China, where state-run sports schools comb through communities searching for the extremely tall to play basketball and the double-jointed to learn diving. The state oversees their training into adulthood.
That system, says Bill Martin, the former president of the USOC, wouldn't work in the U.S. 'It's not part of the DNA of our country to have one controlling authority on sports,' he says. 'The beauty of our system is that Olympians can come out of anywhere, and they do.'
China's projected medal decline points to a common post-host hangover and a more fundamental weakness in its approach to athlete development: the decline of the sports school. Over the past decade, the number of sports schools in China has decreased by 40%, according to state-run newspaper Global Times, as the country's booming economy has created more career options for rural youth whose families once viewed sports schools as a meal ticket or the only means of social mobility. Now families are more likely to turn down an invitation to a sports school because other options exist.
Chinese sports officials declined to comment for this story, but Susan Brownell, a professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, who has written extensively about Chinese sports, says the country 'is just really slowly moving toward a sports system that is more in line with what other countries have─very slowly.'
Hunting for Talent
The potency of the U.S. system is its ability to spread money and opportunity to the broadest spectrum of athletes. 'You've got this competitive system of clubs and coaches and schools all looking for talent,' says Chris Welton, chief executive of Helios Partners, a sports-consulting firm that works with Olympic organizations around the world. 'If you've got athletic talent in this country, it's so much harder to be missed.'
The system largely leaves training up to the athletes, forcing them (and their parents) to be hungry and entrepreneurial in their search for the best coaching and money to fund their training.
Jesse Williams, the NCAA high-jump champion in 2006, failed to make the final at the 2008 Olympics. When his career continued to sputter, Williams switched coaches to train with Cliff Rovelto at Kansas State University. Rovelto overhauled his training and jumping style. Williams did away with his 300-meter repetitions and now never runs farther than 60 meters leading up to a major competition. His regimen is focused on reaching maximum speed in his final steps before his jump as he sprints toward the bar, clawing the track with his whole foot instead of bounding into his jump while running on his toes.
The changes helped Williams win the gold at the IAAF World Championships in South Korea last summer, and now he is headed for London. 'I feel like I can jump over Times Square,' he said in a recent interview.
Then there is Gabrielle Douglas, the 16-year-old who won the U.S. Olympic Trials competition in gymnastics. Her family cobbled together enough money and support to send her from her home in Virginia at 14 to West Des Moines, Iowa, where she lived with a host family and trained with Liang Chow, coach of 2008 gold medalist Shawn Johnson.
Douglas is part of a U.S. Olympic gymnastics team that includes 2011 world all-around champion Jordyn Wieber (Michigan) and gold-medal hopeful Alexandra Raisman (Massachusetts).
The team is favored to win the women's team gold medal in London, something few would have predicted eight years ago when the Chinese were ascendant.
Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics, says the relatively decentralized American approach has created 'a system that has a pipeline that continues to bring new kids into the elite level.'
MATTHEW FUTTERMAN / LORETTA CHAO / GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
Four years after China became the first country since 1992 to win more Olympic gold medals than the U.S., The Wall Street Journal's medal projections for London suggest the Star-Spangled Banner will once again play more often than any other anthem.
And for the fifth consecutive Summer Games, the U.S. should finish atop the overall medal table.
China's victory in the gold-medal race in 2008 was supposed to herald the arrival of the newest Olympic superpower, a vast country with 1.3 billion people and a proven government-sponsored training program. Even at the U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters in Colorado Springs, there was a growing sense that China would win the most gold and overall medals in 2012.
Instead, London should vindicate America's decentralized and entrepreneurial approach to developing the world's best athletes. The Wall Street Journal's projections show Team U.S.A.'s 530 athletes should leave London with 40 gold medals and 108 overall, topping the Chinese, who are projected to collect 38 gold medals and 92 overall.
The Journal's forecasting system takes into account basic information such as interviews with experts and the performances of athletes in recent national and international competitions. But rather than simply anointing first-, second- and third-place finishers in each event and calling it a day, the model assigns probabilities to the top medal contenders, then uses those probabilities to project the most likely outcomes.
For instance, the U.S. women's basketball team, which hasn't lost a game at the Olympics since 1992, is an 80% favorite to win the gold by our count─while the next most likely winners come in at 10%. Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic, who has to prevail over stiff competition from Roger Federer and hometown favorite Andy Murray, has just a 40% chance for gold. After tallying those probabilities, we enlisted sports actuary John Dewan, owner of Baseball Info Solutions, to run 1,000 simulations of the Games.
The results were emphatic: The U.S. won or tied for the most medals 998 times. And while the gold-medal race was less certain, the U.S. won it 746 times to 304 for China. There were 57 ties and seven scenarios in which Russia was a surprise winner.
Some events were so close they were tough to handicap. This year, there's a cracker of a match before the Opening Ceremony even takes place, as the U.S. women's soccer team takes on a talented French side in a rematch of their 2011 World Cup semifinal. We expect the U.S. to survive on the strength of deadly scoring duo Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan, and to earn a medal, but the match shouldn't be missed.
Same goes for the showdown in the men's 110-meter hurdles, where China's Liu Xiang, Cuba's Dayron Robles, and Jayson Richardson of the U.S. are all capable of winning gold and setting a world record. Wall Street Journal projections have Xiang and Robles in a dead heat. And only a fool would miss the men's 200-meter freestyle, where American Ryan Lochte should beat France's Yannick Agnel by a fingernail, but not more.
As for individual sports disciplines, the predictions show the U.S. dominating where it usually does─in medal-rich swimming and track and field. Those two sports should account for 57 U.S. medals, or 53% of the U.S. haul. Swimmer Michael Phelps isn't chasing eight gold medals again, but he could easily win five gold and seven overall.
Chinese success in winning medals relies less on raw athletic talent than it does on intense training. The Chinese do best in the sorts of events where a tireless commitment to practice pays dividends. China, for example, should rack up medals in weightlifting (eight), diving (nine) and table tennis (six). In 2008, China won 16 medals in badminton and shooting and just two in swimming and track. Its swimming is improved, thanks to distance specialist Sun Yang, who is expected to win both the 1,500-meter and 400-meter freestyle races.
Britain's Olympic improvement should continue, too, with the country's hopes riding on a few key athletes, including distance runner Mo Farah, who may try to pull off the rare feat of winning both the 5,000- and 10,000-meter races. Meanwhile, Germany should continue to confound the experts, winning just 49 overall medals, far below what a country so populous, wealthy and successful at the Winter Olympics should.
On the other end of the spectrum: Jamaica. Led by Usain Bolt, the planet's fastest man, and the world's top sprint team, Jamaica should claim a dozen medals, four of them gold. Not bad for a country of just 2.9 million people.
Sore Ankles and Split Seconds
A return to U.S. Olympic supremacy would come at a time when the economy is lagging and when Americans are feeling somewhat less than superpower-like. It also arrives in the middle of a presidential race in which both candidates could use the outcome for their benefit: President Obama by noting that the triumph occurred on his watch and Mitt Romney by touting his credentials as the chief of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
Team U.S.A.'s projected success is subject to the whims of world-class athletic competition, of course─an environment where a sore ankle or a few hundredths of a second can make the difference between victory and defeat. Two American swimmers, Phelps and Missy Franklin, could help the U.S. win a dozen gold medals, or they could get the flu and leave empty-handed.
If probability becomes reality, however, a U.S. romp could presage more dominance in the future. The USOC receives no support from the federal government. But nothing gets Americans to reach into their pocketbooks on behalf of the Olympics more than seeing Americans win.
'The better we do, the more money we can raise,' says Scott Blackmun, chief executive of the USOC.
Olympic improvement tends to come with hosting the Games, as when China soared in 2008. Besides the psychological advantage of competing at home, host countries invest in facilities, coaching and athlete development. China poured money and effort into 'Project 119,' a program to target the 119 potential gold medals in sports where China was traditionally weak, such as swimming, boxing and athletics. The Chinese won 51 gold medals and 100 overall in 2008, up from 28 and 63 in 2004.
The British have spent nearly $500 million to fund training and athletic-development programs since 2009. The Journal projects that Team GB, as it is known, will win 22 gold medals and 66 overall this year, a vast improvement from eight years ago, when Britain won nine gold medals and 31 overall.
The U.S. hasn't hosted a Summer Olympics since 1996 and won't host another one until at least 2024. It spends relatively little on athletes. The USOC shells out on average $106.2 million a year to train and treat its winter and summer athletes and maintain its training centers in Colorado Springs, Lake Placid, N.Y., and Chula Vista, Calif.
However, while the USOC has the ultimate power of naming the country's Olympic team, it has relatively few resources and athletes under its direct control. The national governing body for each sport, such as USA Track & Field and USA Swimming, is largely responsible for developing future Olympians. In most cases, those groups rely largely on the U.S. collegiate, scholastic and recreational sports systems.
During the 2010-11 school year, the latest for which figures are available, U.S. college athletic departments spent $12.1 billion, according to U.S. Department of Education filings. High-school athletic departments spend several billion dollars more. U.S. parents dig deep also, spending hundreds of millions on training in hopes their kids become the next Abby Wambach or Nastia Luikin.
Compare that with China, where state-run sports schools comb through communities searching for the extremely tall to play basketball and the double-jointed to learn diving. The state oversees their training into adulthood.
That system, says Bill Martin, the former president of the USOC, wouldn't work in the U.S. 'It's not part of the DNA of our country to have one controlling authority on sports,' he says. 'The beauty of our system is that Olympians can come out of anywhere, and they do.'
China's projected medal decline points to a common post-host hangover and a more fundamental weakness in its approach to athlete development: the decline of the sports school. Over the past decade, the number of sports schools in China has decreased by 40%, according to state-run newspaper Global Times, as the country's booming economy has created more career options for rural youth whose families once viewed sports schools as a meal ticket or the only means of social mobility. Now families are more likely to turn down an invitation to a sports school because other options exist.
Chinese sports officials declined to comment for this story, but Susan Brownell, a professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, who has written extensively about Chinese sports, says the country 'is just really slowly moving toward a sports system that is more in line with what other countries have─very slowly.'
Hunting for Talent
The potency of the U.S. system is its ability to spread money and opportunity to the broadest spectrum of athletes. 'You've got this competitive system of clubs and coaches and schools all looking for talent,' says Chris Welton, chief executive of Helios Partners, a sports-consulting firm that works with Olympic organizations around the world. 'If you've got athletic talent in this country, it's so much harder to be missed.'
The system largely leaves training up to the athletes, forcing them (and their parents) to be hungry and entrepreneurial in their search for the best coaching and money to fund their training.
Jesse Williams, the NCAA high-jump champion in 2006, failed to make the final at the 2008 Olympics. When his career continued to sputter, Williams switched coaches to train with Cliff Rovelto at Kansas State University. Rovelto overhauled his training and jumping style. Williams did away with his 300-meter repetitions and now never runs farther than 60 meters leading up to a major competition. His regimen is focused on reaching maximum speed in his final steps before his jump as he sprints toward the bar, clawing the track with his whole foot instead of bounding into his jump while running on his toes.
The changes helped Williams win the gold at the IAAF World Championships in South Korea last summer, and now he is headed for London. 'I feel like I can jump over Times Square,' he said in a recent interview.
Then there is Gabrielle Douglas, the 16-year-old who won the U.S. Olympic Trials competition in gymnastics. Her family cobbled together enough money and support to send her from her home in Virginia at 14 to West Des Moines, Iowa, where she lived with a host family and trained with Liang Chow, coach of 2008 gold medalist Shawn Johnson.
Douglas is part of a U.S. Olympic gymnastics team that includes 2011 world all-around champion Jordyn Wieber (Michigan) and gold-medal hopeful Alexandra Raisman (Massachusetts).
The team is favored to win the women's team gold medal in London, something few would have predicted eight years ago when the Chinese were ascendant.
Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics, says the relatively decentralized American approach has created 'a system that has a pipeline that continues to bring new kids into the elite level.'
MATTHEW FUTTERMAN / LORETTA CHAO / GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
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