United States Athletic Teams

It was a dream deferred for Dan O'Brien and it arrived in the customary manner of the 10-event decathlon: running through the pain of memory and ignoring the pressure of expectations. Thursday night O'Brien earned the title of world's greatest athlete--which he was ordained to win along with the Olympic gold in 1992. But he didn't make the U.S. Olympic team and the gold medal he earned here was born out of that failure.

So the United States gets clobbered in baseball at the Olympics, 11-2. That's a little surprising, but then Cuba is the power of the world in international ball and has been for years. . . . What's that? Not Cuba? Japan? Japan beat the United States, 11-2, on Thursday? Japan hit five home runs? Japan got 15 hits? No way! Japan? Japan plays little ball. Japan bunts for base hits, moves the runner, squeezes runs home one at a time. Apparently, somebody forgot to tell the Japanese.

Tired of waiting for Carl Lewis to pass track and field's torch to him, Michael Johnson took it and ran Thursday night, ran faster in the 200 meters than any other man ever has before. While controversy raged around the decision about whether Lewis should run the 400-meter relay final Saturday on the Summer Olympics' final weekend, it took only 19.32 seconds for Johnson to return the focus, for at least one night, to the athletes on the track in Centennial Olympic Stadium.

Dot Richardson gets all the headlines: "Shortstop With a Surgeon's Hands." "Doctor Trades Scalpel for Glove, Bat and Ball." "Doctor Has Dreams of Olympics, Own Practice." "What Softball Ordered: A Doctor at Shortstop." "Operation Softball." As you page through the U.S. softball team's file of newspaper clippings, you wonder if there is anyone else on the team. Quietly, politely, deferentially, first baseman Sheila Cornell wonders too. "I wouldn't call it resentment," Cornell says.

A flying wedge of blockers runs interference, but Michael Johnson gets gang-tackled by the autograph seekers anyway. "Michael! Michael!" they beseech him, thrusting scraps of paper, caps, cups, anything they can find, until eventually the uniformed cops give up. After all, the fastest man alive is no longer in a hurry. He signs his name, again and again, the Olympic 200 meter champion does, with a smile all over his face.

Michelle Akers tumbled on the turf in front of the vacant Chinese net, exulting in the Olympic gold-medal moment with teammate Tiffeny Milbrett, who earlier had scored the game-winning goal in the United States' 2-1 victory over China. Typically, Akers said later she wanted to reach out to a friend and teammate who had overcome adversity. She could have been talking about herself.

Shaquille O'Neal finally won something. Although he played a piddling 5 minutes 14 seconds of the United States' game against Yugoslavia, after entering the Georgia Dome in the worst-looking hat I have ever seen outside of a Dr. Seuss book, the $120-million manchild now bound for Los Angeles can finally call himself a champion. May it be the beginning of a trend. I trust Shaq will treasure his gold medallion more than Muhammad Ali did.

There's no missing the mission at U.S. women's basketball games where the play list includes "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" and "Pretty Woman" and "We Are Family," with its line: "I've got all my sisters with me." Before the team takes the floor, Coach Tara VanDerveer, who dressed up as a bear mascot in junior high for boys' games because there was no girls' team, reminds her players that many fans who will be here have never seen a women's game, so give them something to remember.

A fancy news conference was held here Saturday to bestow the Olympic Spirit Award on the U.S. athlete who most embodied the Games' ideals. But this story is not about that fancy news conference. Because media voters messed up. They gave it to the cute little gymnast and sleek track athlete from Houston. They should have given it to the fat, bald guy from Iran. Not that U.S. wrestler Matt Ghaffari seems to mind. "I'm not somebody like Kerri Strauss," he said.

Oh. Canada. It would be easy today for some of us to gloat to U.S. track and field Coach Erv Hunt, "We told you so." In conjunction with Dennis Mitchell, the U.S. sprint captain, he foolishly chose to leave Carl Lewis off the team in the 400-meter relay final Saturday night. The U.S. team of Jon Drummond, Tim Harden, Michael Marsh and Mitchell finished second, the first time the Americans have ever failed to win an Olympic sprint relay race that they managed to finish.