Finding Balance On a Dizzying Day

By Thomas Boswell
Friday, August 22, 2008

BEIJING

Inside the Bird's Nest, the U.S. track and field team didn't know whether to wrap itself in the flag and take a victory lap after a sweep in the 400-meter final. Or hide its head in collective shame after both the men and women's 4x100 relay teams dropped the baton in preliminary heats, knocking themselves out of what would have almost certainly been silver medals by week's end.

Everywhere you looked, a U.S. star like silver medalist Allyson Felix was describing herself as "devastated" after failing to win the 200 meters, an event in which she was world champion this year. But take a quick look around and you'll also find smiles. Why, there are delighted David Payne and David Oliver (of Howard University) celebrating after taking silver and bronze behind Cuba's imperial Dayron Robles in the 110 hurdles, the race China's Liu Xiang never got to run.

What happened in front of 91,000 fans at the Nest on Thursday evening should not have been a surprise. A stunning, thrilling, embarrassing and dizzying day at the Olympics left the U.S. team, and its fans, almost too disoriented to know whether to cheer or mourn.

No bigger favorite is going to blow a gold medal at these Games than the U.S. softball team, which had won its last 22 Olympic games and, after rolling up a 57-2 combined score here, was ready to take its fourth straight gold. Then a Japanese pitcher, Yukiko Ueno, who already had pitched 21 innings in two games the day before, beat the U.S. team, 3-1, with seven more innings.

The U.S. women's water polo team, ranked No. 1 in the world, lost in the gold medal game, 9-8, to the Netherlands on a shot with 26 seconds left. The U.S. team, trying to move from bronze in 2000 to silver in 2004 to gold here, hit the post with a shot in the last 10 seconds.

So, a bad day for U.S. women's teams in finals, correct? Not really. There will be few sweeter upsets here than the soccer team's 1-0 win in extra time over arch rival Brazil.

In the Olympics, especially in this one, you can only take handicapping and predictions so far. Too many athletes from too many countries are now too close in ability to pretend you can make meaningful distinctions at the most elite level. The balance of power in a sport can shift suddenly.

Few, for example, guessed Jamaica would emerge here and obliterate the traditional powerhouse United States in every sprint -- the 100 and 200 for both men and women.

When the island's Veronica Campbell-Brown dusted the slightly favored Felix, the United States suddenly found itself outclassed in speed by a country with one-one hundredth of our population. American sprinters were so rattled by this sweep, and the prospect of meeting Jamaica again in the 4x100 relays, that both teams disintegrated within 20 minutes of each other.

"It's just been one thing after the other at this Olympics," said relay anchor Tyson Gay, a pre-Games contender in the 100.

"I reached back for the baton and -- whoa -- it wasn't there," said Gay, who misconnected with Darvis Patton in a heat in which the Americans probably could have advanced if they'd run backward.

"It's been tough," said Gay, who graciously took "full blame" for what is seldom a one-person mistake. "This has just been a bad meet for us."

And it got worse fast. Torri Edwards seemed to slap the baton too hard into the hand of Lauryn Williams, then release it too quickly -- the opposite of Patton being too delicate in his pass to Gay. But who really knows? The baton pass may be the most deceitful simple act in sports.

"We're not real sure what happened," Williams said. "The stick had a mind of its own. It wasn't either of our faults." That's what the Titanic and the iceberg said, too.

Williams, however, saved some dignity by recovering the baton, then sprinting every inch to the finish even though she was almost 100 yards behind. "I knew I was not walking to the finish line in the Olympics," she said.

At roughly that moment, a night that might have been awful for the United States began to regain its equilibrium. In the 400 meters, Jeremy Wariner and LaShawn Merritt were prohibitive favorites; however, Merritt's win over the more celebrated Wariner was a surprise as the Athens winner simply found he had "nothing left" for the last 200 yards after a long season.

The treat of the evening was David Neville's dive for the tape for a bronze medal to complete the sweep even though seven of the eight men in the field had run better times than his career personal best. The Indiana grad who plans to be a jazz percussionist or a minister, didn't quite belong in that Olympic photo-finish frame, but there he was -- with one chance in a lifetime.

"I knew it was going to hurt," said Neville, whose full-speed dive brought a gasp from the crowd as he belly-flopped -- and a stretcher came speeding onto the track. The film showed Neville had won an Olympic medal by perhaps three inches. "Within 15 minutes, I was okay. I didn't even get hurt much," he said, fingering his medal. Bronze, in a certain light, looks a lot like a gold medal.

"For me, it is," Neville said.

In a certain light, the United States let a lot of chances for gold or silver medals get away on Thursday as China has pulled away to a stunning insurmountable lead in gold, 46-29, after trailing America, 36-32, in first-place prizes in '04.

The balance of Olympic power has not only shifted, but dramatically, and perhaps for a long time, even if China piles up many medals in obscure sports while the United States, by and large, does best in the marquee events.

Let's turn a brighter shade of light on the proceedings, too. Despite plenty of disappointed hopes, the United States got 11 medals in a day, and still leads in total medal count, 99-83; granted, that's far from 102-63 over China in Athens.

Perhaps America's days of clear-cut world dominance are passing. Maybe the time is coming when we must pass the baton between ourselves a bit more carefully and, when necessary, throw dignity and fear aside to dive full-length for the finish line.