SAINT DENIS, France — Like anyone who spent time at the Stade de France during Olympic competition, Sebastian Coe was truly impressed by the strength, depth and incredible speed of the American track and field equipment.
Men and women, distance and sprint, jump, throw, combined events, it doesn’t matter. The Americans are collecting medals almost everywhere. They are arguably the best national track and field team ever assembled and are among the biggest stars on display for a USA team that has no shortage of stars with Stephen Curry and LeBron James.
Coe, a two-time Olympic champion for Great Britain in the 1980s who now heads the International Association of Athletics Federations, the sport’s international governing body, knows how that happened, despite the United States’ advantages in wealth and population.
“It’s really a testament to the college system, to good college coaching,” Coe said before the American runners and jumpers won eight medals, three of them gold, in nearly 90 frantic minutes Thursday night.
Coe knows athletics inside and out. He’s also been close to countless top athletes in his sport and beyond. He knows the global athletics landscape better than anyone. “The quality of coaches coming out of the United States now is probably at a higher level,” he said. “The weather and athletics in the United States owe a lot to the university system.”
Coe’s comments will go to the heart of the biggest problem facing U.S. Olympic officials as the flame goes out in Paris: Americans dominate the medal tally but feel the world, especially China, is squeezing them hard, especially in medals.
They know that the American college athletic system, which annually supports and educates thousands of students in Olympic sports, both American and international, is their golden goose. They are desperate to do everything they can to ensure that it is not invented by budget managers and college presidents who might view runners, wrestlers and gymnasts as a drain on resources, not an asset.
Florida’s Grant Holloway won the gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles. Team USA’s Daniel Roberts (right), a Kentucky graduate, took the silver. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
“What we’ve seen in recent years is that university presidents and publicists are not willing to cut Olympic sports programs en masse, but that could happen,” said Rocky Harris, executive director of sports for the IOC, Arizona State University’s chief athletic officer, in an interview this week. “We need to advise them and help them change their world, but make changes that don’t negatively impact us.”
Now, most of the rest of the world would forgive the Olympians if they found this border panic a little rich. The Americans are arriving from Paris with results that would spark national celebrations in most countries.
For the eighth consecutive Summer Games, the United States will win more medals than any other country. And again, it wasn’t even close.
In the middle of the second week, when the U.S. track and field team clinched the medals, the women’s volleyball team won a series of sweeps to reach the gold medal match and the women’s soccer team was once again confirmed as a global force after exiting in the round of 16 at last year’s World Cup.
There’s even a former venture capitalist named Kristen Faulkner who won a gold medal in her own road race, even though she only started riding seriously six years ago.
Well, because the Americans will need all the gold medals to beat China in this tournament. A start on what was originally the B team for the 4×400-meter medley relay at the start of the track meet may have cost the United States the gold medal. The Americans won silver. The defending women’s water polo team lost three times on penalty kicks in the semifinals and missed the podium altogether. So the margins are tight.
The Americans won 48 gold medals in London in 2012, and China trailed in 2016 with 9 medals to 39. The United States beat Great Britain by 46 points in Rio in 2016. -27.
Since then, the world has been conquered. Part of this has to do with the inevitable trend of creating Olympic unicorns, athletes who can win team gold medals. There are many versions of Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles.
The U.S. dominance in medals has been driven in part by individual medalists like Michael Phelps, who has won an astonishing 28 medals in four Olympic Games. (Al Bello/Getty Images)
The last is swimmer Leon Marchand, 22, who is French, although he has spent the past three years training at an American university while Olympic organizers urged NBC and other media outlets to return home.
Marchand has many businesses. Julianne Alfred of St. Lucia became the fastest woman in the world when she won the 100 meters. She went to the University of Texas. And Scotland’s Josh Kerr, who ran for the University of New Mexico, won silver in the 1,500 meters in what Coe called “the race for the ages.”
“It’s important for Team USA, but it’s also something America can celebrate: We’re helping produce all these athletes,” Sarah Hirshland, executive director of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said in an interview Friday, hoping her message will resonate with college presidents and administrators. “We need them to think hard about what college sports mean on campus.”
Just because swimming doesn’t make a lot of money for the university, “that doesn’t mean it’s not worth having on campus,” Hirschland noted.
The USOC is in the midst of an ongoing lobbying campaign in Washington, D.C., where politicians are considering legislation that could mandate specific treatment and payments for college athletes, Hirshland said. More attention is being paid to football and basketball players who want to share their earnings, but that could also change the status of athletes in nonprofit sports. If Congress raises those costs too high, more universities could try to cut back on Olympic sports.
Harris and Hirshland know how tragic that is.
“If Oregon State cuts the highway, it’s going to be a big problem for us,” Harris said. “If Stanford stops swimming, it’s going to be a big problem.”
In addition to the direct financial support, advice and training provided by the university, there is a frequent competitive experience.
Women’s freestyle volleyball player Justine Wong-Orantes made plenty of plays and sets to keep the United States’ hopes of a second straight gold medal alive against Brazil on Friday afternoon. The Americans played in five sets in front of a loud and hostile Brazilian crowd.
Wong-Orantes was quick to mention her experience at the University of Nebraska, where women’s volleyball is big and sometimes played to a sold-out football stadium.
“I know what it’s like to play in a big space,” he said.
Then there’s the collective impact on how parents raise their children. Would American parents invest tens of thousands of dollars each year to support their children’s athletic development if there was no incentive to earn a potential college scholarship or get accepted to a prestigious university?
The USA fencing program is primarily a mix of undergraduates and graduates from Harvard, Princeton and Columbia. Adrian Weinberg, the goalie for the U.S. men’s water polo team that will play for the bronze medal on Sunday, graduated from the University of California-Berkeley in 2023.
Weinberg grew up in Los Angeles, where his admission to Cal was a hotly contested lottery ticket. A decade of youth, club and high school volleyball certainly helped.
Under this not-so-secret sauce, Olympic officials and young American athletes, both in the United States and elsewhere, remain optimistic. The reason the vast majority of Olympic medalists of all colors come from sports that have a presence on college campuses.
The NCAA system doesn’t just help Americans. French star Leon Marchand is one of several foreign Olympians at American universities. (Christian Leveg – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
Following? Take a look.
Swimming? Take a look.
Fence? Take a look.
Volleyball? Take a look.
Women’s rugby? Take a look.
Taekwondo? Canoeing? Not so much.
Behind another display of more than 100 medals and an intense race for gold are teeth that stretch from the hallowed halls to the local YMCA’s after-school recreation program. They include coaches, famous and not-so-famous, at the forefront of their sport, and millions of unknowing parents who push their children to compete in a wide range of talents, in part because of the incentives and potential rewards. Do it.
Nothing lasts forever, not even without the work it takes to maintain it. With the first Summer Games since 1984 coming to Los Angeles four years ago, work has never been more important to the people who make it happen.
“Our plan is to spend the next four years developing the star power of our athletes,” Harris said. “We want our athletes to become stars.”
(Top photo: Americans Anna Cockrell and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone display their medals in the women’s 400m. Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
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