By Philip Hersh
Chicago Tribune
(KRT)
HELSINKI, Finland - In the Olympic world, leading officials repeatedly have mentioned the importance of the United States having a strong track and field team.
It makes NBC happier about spending billions in Olympic rights fees, since track and field dominates the second week of the Summer Games, when viewer interest can flag. It makes the international federation happy, since the U.S. is expected to provide stars for its premier event, the World Track and Field Championships.
That feeling helps explain why International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge gave unsolicited props to Team USA for its impressive showing at the 10th outdoor worlds.
When the meet ended Sunday, the U.S. had won nearly one-third of the events with its best-ever gold-medal total of 14, double that of runner-up Russia. The overall U.S. medal count, 25, was its highest at the biennial meet since 1993 and missed by just one of matching its best-ever total.
Three days earlier, in a telephone interview from Spain, Rogge made a point of mentioning the U.S. team without being asked. Congratulations to the U.S. team,'' Rogge said. With this new generation of young, charismatic athletes, I think Beijing is going to be a great performance for the United States.’’
But a lot can happen before the Beijing Olympics in three years.
China is expected to do much better as the 2008 Olympic home team than its disappointing one silver medal here.
Yet given the level of official concern about an aging U.S. team’s performance at the world meet three years before the last Olympics, plus the image damage done by the athletes linked to BALCO, the results here cannot help but make USATF officials feel the turnaround begun by a new generation of athletes at the 2004 Olympics will be lasting.
The average age of the individual-event U.S. gold medalists at this meet is 23.5, and only two of those 12 medals came from a previous world medalist. Just three of the 20 U.S. athletes who won individual medals here are older than 27, and 13 are younger than 25.
At the 2001 worlds in Edmonton, just one of the six individual U.S. winners was a first-time world medalist. None of the six was younger than 25, only one younger than 27.
USATF chief executive Craig Masback cited what he called two global factors'' for the emergence of so much young talent at the same time: the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the effects of drug testing. The kids who are doing well here were 8, 9, 10 during Atlanta,’’
he said. They already were the fastest on their block or in their school, and they may already have been in a youth track program. During the Atlanta Olympics, they had what I call a validating experience. For weeks on end, track and field and superstar athletes like Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson were features of American life - on newspaper front pages, magazine covers, TV. This generation is a product of that.’’
Kids who had seen no future in the quarter-mile suddenly found an opportunity and seized it.
Jeremy Wariner, 20, won the 2004 Olympic gold in the 400 and followed it Friday with the world title. Darold Williamson, 21, won the 2004 Olympic silver. Andrew Rock, 23, won the 2005 world silver but knows competition is so tough that his future success is not guaranteed.
There are so many young guys in this event, it makes it really tough,'' said Rock, of Stratford, Wis. You never know what is going to happen a year from now.
``I told myself, ‘What if I don’t ever get back to this point?’ I like to think I’ll get back, but you want to take full advantage of it while you’re here.’’
Rock won gold leading off the 1,600 relay Sunday. That kiddie corps has an average age of 23.3.
