Mike Celizic

Until 2002 and Salt Lake City, no one had ever put the words “winter sports power” and “United States” in the same sentence. But the U.S. Olympic team exploded all over Utah, sweeping up 34 total medals, ten of them gold.

Before that eruption, the United States was usually happy with a dozen medals; the team won six gold and 13 total in the 1998 Games, the same number it had in 1992.

So what’s it going to be this year, a return to pre-Utah levels, an even bigger harvest, or something in between?

My guess is the United States will win at least eight golds and as many as 12 while taking home at least 30 total medals and as many as 36. That’s more than most are predicting. Sports Illustrated is giving the United States 34 total medals but just five golds and and MSNBC’s Olympic Expert, Filip Bondy, is calling for seven golds and 32 total.

But I learned in Athens, where I scoffed at U.S. Olympic Committee predictions that its team would win 100 total medals. I thought that was a fantasy. With more and more countries spending more and more money on athletics, it seemed impossible for the United States to dominate the way it and the old Soviet Union once did. But the officials were right. The United States won 103 medals.

The USOC, it turns out, isn’t into making brash predictions. When it talks about what it should do, it’s dealing with fact, not fiction.

In Turin, the USOC isn’t talking numbers, but it is talking big.

“We feel that this is, without question, the most accomplished team and perhaps the strongest team that we’ve placed on the field of play in an Olympic Winter Games,” said Jim Scherr, the USOC’s chief executive officer. “Our expectations are very high.”

In truth, the predictions of Bondy and Sports Illustrated are also high, at least according to the Olympic number crunchers. They say that that teams on average experience a 40 percent decline in medals four years after hosting an Olympics. If that holds for the United States, which had the home-mountain advantage in 2002, the medal count would fall to about 20 this year.

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Then there’s Daniel K.N. Johnson of Colorado College, who uses economic data to predict – often with impressive accuracy – how many medals nations will win. Johnson hit the United States’ 2004 Athens total right on – 103. For the Turin Winter Games, he predicts 22 medals, eight of them gold.

I don’t buy either the post-partum regression nor the economic angle.

Johnson’s theory, which uses per capita income and gross domestic product as indicators. That doesn’t necessarily work for the United States because more money and support is flowing into the team than his model would predict.

There’s a greater level of commitment among the U.S. team than ever before and higher expectations. It’s like what happens in Austria, whose citizens think of themselves as the world’s best Alpine skiers and turn out to be right. Americans think that way about snowboarding and they’re beginning to get that idea about Alpine skiing and the various forms of speedskating.

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Then there’s that average drop of 40 percent in medals after a team hosts the games. There’s no arguing with the percentages; numbers are numbers. But the number is an average – some teams do worse and some do better.

The United States will be one of the countries that will do better – much better. That’s because the huge increase in medals in 2002 wasn’t due solely to hosting the Games. The USOC has streamlined its operation, focused more on the athletes, pouring more money into the governing bodies that run each sport.

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