China, Canada gaining on U.S.

TORINO, Italy — The United States came here aiming to top the medals table, to be the best in the Winter Olympic world.

Whether U.S. athletes were even North America's best at the Torino Games is a debate that ended, arguably, in a tie.

The United States finished with 25 medals, second behind Germany's 29 but just ahead of Canada's 24. And perhaps our neighbors to the north could petition the historians for an amended tally.

Ice dancers Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto won one of the U.S. medals, and, until Dec. 31, Belbin held only Canadian citizenship. In the name of looney diplomacy, should the final medal reckoning read United States 24, Canada 24?

Whatever the numbers, Canada and other countries such as China, Russia and South Korea, served the United States humble pie and plenty of notice at the Torino Games.

"It's a reminder that the world is changing quickly and, as global citizens, we have to be ready to compete," U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth says. "That's true of business, that's true of education, that's true of medicine, and that's certainly true of sport."

It may never be more true than at the next Olympics, the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

China is directing seemingly limitless resources to organizing the best Games ever and to fielding the best Summer Olympics team ever. The country's potential was seen at the 2004 Summer Games, where it won 31 gold medals (second only to the United States' 35) and 62 overall, and again in Torino.

Chinese athletes won a record 11 medals here, including the country's first medals in a snow sport, a gold and silver in aerials skiing. China won its first Winter Olympic medals just 14 years ago, at the 1992 Albertville Olympics.

Of the Beijing Olympics, Chinese speedskater Yang Yang (A) says her countrymen "are looking forward to that Games more than other Games because they really want to know what China will do. I think the world will be surprised."

The Olympic world, at least, already is in game-face mode.

"That will be the most important sporting event in history," Ueberroth says. "The reasons for that have to do with culture and politics and sport, and the very impressive emergence of the Chinese people in sport.

"The standard of competition will be much higher, as it has been here."