USA seeks cycling, rowing gems for 2008 Games

By Vicki Michaelis, USA TODAY

 

 Updated 7/10/2006 4:51 PM ET

 

Jonathan Vaughters hatched the notion in May 2005, over dinner with some of his company's sponsors.

"We were just throwing around ideas of what was it we were going to do to make cycling cool after Lance Armstrong was gone," says Vaughters, a former professional cyclist and now chief executive officer of Slipstream Sports, which manages cycling teams.

Vaughters suggested they look toward the track, historically a very uncool place for aspiring Tour de France winners to be.

His reasoning: The athletes on Slipstream's teams probably are too young to vie for road cycling medals in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. But since the international pool for track cyclists isn't nearly as deep as for road cyclists, they might have a shot at track medals.

"What became very apparent to me was that a number of our riders that we already employed on the road were very much the equal, if not the superior, in athletic ability to these guys that were winning Olympic gold and silver medals on the track. Obviously the track is a little different from the road, but in the end it's all about pedaling a bike fast," Vaughters says.

Vaughters' idea mirrors the thinking of U.S. Olympic sports officials who have changed strategies heading into the Beijing Games, where the USA is expected to be in a neck-and-neck race with China, and possibly Russia, for medal supremacy.

In sports such as track cycling, rowing and canoe/kayak, where the Olympic medals are plentiful but the U.S. take in recent Games has been pitiful, U.S. athletes are being asked to take a different approach to training with an eye toward taking advantage of the multiple-medal opportunities.

"Certainly where there is a direct head-to-head component with our top two rivals, Russia and China, it makes for a compelling story that a medal win for us in that particular area means there's one less medal won by our two top competing nations," says Steve Roush, chief of sport performance for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

• At USRowing, where the focus traditionally has been on the eights, members of the 2004 Olympic medalist men's and women's eight teams are training in smaller boats and becoming more proficient in sculling. In sculling events, each rower pulls two oars. In the eights, a sweep event, each rower pulls one oar. The Olympics includes eight sculling and six sweep events.

 

"We dominated in the eights, and now we'd like to have some multiple medalists," says Glenn Merry, USRowing's executive director. The eights accounted for the only medals won by U.S. rowers in the 2004 Games.

In last year's world championships, U.S. women won silver in lightweight double sculls and bronze in single sculls. They finished seventh in those two events in the 2001 worlds.

The shift will take time to institute broadly, Merry says, since most aspiring rowers in the USA begin in the eights rather than in sculling, as they do in Europe, the world epicenter of rowing prowess.

"The women's NCAA program doesn't include any sculling in championships," Merry says. "We have some structural and cultural history to overcome. This is kind of the first three steps into it."

• USA Canoe/Kayak's new approach is the opposite of USRowing's. For the sprint events, which account for 12 of 16 events on the Olympic program, USA Canoe/Kayak has shifted its top athletes to training full time in team boats.

USA Canoe/Kayak won one medal in the 2004 Olympics, in women's kayak singles.

"You'll always have a singles star even in this approach," says U.S. sprint head coach Nathan Luce, who brought the philosophy from his home country of Canada when he was hired a year ago.

Unlike previous years, the U.S. women's kayak fours team is making finals in this year's World Cup races. "If we give the women's program two or three years of focus in the four, we have an outside shot at a medal (in Beijing)," Luce says.

Luce adds if the USA qualifies in fours for Beijing, it can automatically compete in two events per discipline, increasing medal chances. Also, he says, the competition in the fours tends to be less challenging than in singles or doubles because smaller countries put their best athletes in the smaller boats.

"It comes down to medals," Luce says. "To get us on the map, we need to get on that podium."

• USA Cycling, like Vaughters, is putting promising road cyclists on the track part time, a process made easier by a switch in track cycling's competition season two years ago from summer to winter. Now athletes can spend time on the track in the winter without compromising their road racing. In the past, the much wider availability of endorsement and prize money in road racing meant few cyclists devoted time to track during the summer.

Twelve of cycling's 18 events contested in the 2004 Olympics were on the track. U.S. cyclists won none of them.

USA Cycling's under-23 program now has a mandatory track component. The group also offers additional training money, through its funding from the USOC, to athletes who show promise on the track. "What we've tried to do over the last few years is create incentives for crossover," USA Cycling executive director Steve Johnson says.

Progress hasn't been as evident as in rowing and canoe/kayak, but Johnson and Vaughters are optimistic. In April, after just a few months of training on the track, where brakes are non-existent and technique is crucial, riders from Slipstream's Team TIAA-CREF competed in the world track championships. They finished 12th of 14 teams in men's team pursuit.

"If the improvement curve can stay that steep until (2008), then we really will be seriously talking about an Olympic medal," Vaughters says.