Is Team USA in for another winter sports overhaul?

When the USA won only six medals at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, the USOC overhauled its winter sports organization. Could it happen again in 2018?

Midway through the 2018 Winter Olympics, the United States was on the verge of suffering its worst medal count in decades.

Athletes for the USA were struggling to reach the podium. There were lots of top-five finishes, but fewer than a dozen medals after the first weekend.

It raised some serious questions about the current state of the USOC and its winter sports program.

Three decades ago, the United States had a rough showing at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Bonnie Blair and Brian Boitano were the only Americans to claim gold medals. The USA won just six medals overall. It was an embarrassing tumble down the medal count for the US Olympic team, which traditionally has featured at or near the top of the standings.

In the aftermath of the struggles in Calgary and later at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, the US Olympic Committee turned to an unlikely source to overhaul its operations. George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, led a commission to investigate the way the USA funds and trains its Olympic athletes.

Out of that investigation, the USOC changed the way it funded both winter sports athletes and all Olympic hopefuls. It overhauled its organizational structure and refocused efforts on reaching podiums. In the ensuing decades since the Calgary Games, the efforts to improve funding and training have resulted in 62 gold medals and 182 total Olympic medals in winter sports.

By the end of the Olympics in Pyeongchang, the USA had rebounded to finish with eight gold medals and 21 podium finishes. It was a respectable result that put the Americans into fourth in the medal count. At the same time, however, athletes for the USA won their country’s lowest number of total medals at the Winter Olympics in the 21st century.

How will the USOC choose to look at this year’s results in Pyeongchang?

When the Americans won just a half-dozen medals in Calgary, it was far less shocking than it might initially seem. The USA was far more focused on the Summer Olympics, and it showed in the medal results over time.

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Americans won 83 gold medals at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. The USA took just four gold and four silver a few months earlier at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. When both those numbers plummeted in 1988, it was a wake-up call that they American system needed an overhaul.

The question now is whether this year’s results fall on that same spectrum of shock. Eight gold medals is not far off the pace of nine golds per Winter Olympics that the USA hit in each of the previous three Olympic cycles. They will still finish in the top five of the medal count against an increasingly deep field of countries vying for winter sports glory.

As such, there are two ways of looking at the situation. One says that the USA merely suffered a down year at the Winter Olympics. Though Americans fell short of their medal goals, they still finished within reasonable levels of variance. The other way posits that this is the sign of atrophy in the USOC system. In this reading of the situation, only an overhaul can prevent further backsliding by Americans in winter sports.

But one can also look at the percentage of medals won by the USA

Traditionally, the USA has won approximately 10 percent of the gold medals and total medals at each Winter Olympics. Sometimes they are slightly higher, sometimes slightly lower. But in general, Americans claim 10 percent of the spoils.

This year was definitely a down year in that regard. More importantly, it is the second straight Olympic cycle where the USA failed to reach its historic averages in gold medals. While winter sports have never been as strong a realm for the Americans, they have failed to reach their benchmarks.

Either way, what is impossible to argue is that this was hardly the result Americans expected when they arrived in Pyeongchang.

The USA failed to capitalize on the absence of many Russian athletes

IOC sanctions against the Russian Federation left a chasm in the competition. In the end, a makeshift delegation of Russian athletes competed under the Olympic banner. But the absence of one of the USA’s traditional rivals seemed to open the door for breakthroughs in places where Americans have traditionally fallen short at the Winter Olympics.

Instead, Americans became even more reliant on medals from events like freestyle skiing and snowboarding. In some ways, the addition of these non-traditional sports to the program have allowed the United States to paper over their failure to keep pace in other winter sports. Athletes for the USA are no longer competitive in sports that have traditionally been on the Olympic calendar.

Speedskaters for the United States failed to win a single medal on the long track for the second straight Winter Olympics. American men didn’t reach the podium once in Alpine skiing. In figure skating, a pair of bronze medals was all the USA could muster. And in events where Americans have traditionally been uncompetitive, such as the biathlon, the opportunity for breakthroughs was squandered.

The result was an underwhelming performance all around. In many ways, though, this result reflects the emphasis that other countries put on winter sports relative to the USA. Partially this is just the nature of where national interest lies. Norway, for instance, has a far deeper-rooted historical and modern interest in winter sports than Americans. But another part is simply a matter of how athletes are funded and where emphasis is placed by the USOC.

Unlike other national Olympic committees, the USOC receives no government funding for its Olympic programs. (There is a certain amount of funding set aside by the government for military Paralympics athletes. This has zero impact on the Winter Olympics funding strategy.)

Will 2018 lead to another Olympics overhaul in the USA?

As a result, success and failure become a self-reinforcing Möbius strip. More medals equal more sponsorship and more money to support athletes on their quest for more medals. When the medals fail to come, however, the pattern can quickly get reversed. Fewer medals equal fewer sponsorships and a reduced bankroll to support athletes.

After falling short in many events where Americans had a legitimate chance to capture gold or reach the podium, the USOC must reassess its strategy. Whether this results in a full-blown overhaul of winter sports in the United States is another question.

The situation in Pyeongchang is not remotely analogous to what happened in Calgary 30 years ago. Americans were projected to finish in the top five of the final medal count, and they did just that. Contending for the lead in the medals was always going to be a Sisyphean battle for the USA.

Next: The depressing state of American women's figure skating

In 1988, the motivation for an overhaul came only after Americans followed up a dismal Calgary performance with a stumble in Seoul at the Summer Games later that year. With the Winter and Summer Olympics now operating on alternating even years, it is impossible for this scenario to reemerge.

Still, an overhaul on some level is almost certainly due for the USOC. As they continue to fall further behind in winter sports, they will need to rethink strategy if they hope to maintain top-five position moving forward.