[nativist]

If the US hit four more free throws they would have missed 10, same as the Greeks and still would have lost. I am sick of excuses for the US teams. We dope up our sprinters and our basketball team has the very best we have to offer and we lose and make excuses. The heavyweight division in boxing is dominated by ex-Soviet boxers, all four champs are ex-Soviet and we make excuses. Even before that the champ was British. Tennis? No. Baseball? No. Soccer? of course not. Basketball? No. Golf? Yes. Swimming? Yes.

The very idea of losing used to be hateful to all real Americans (Patton at least in the movie), now just get paid and go shopping.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

The very idea of losing used to be hateful to all real Americans, now just get paid and go shopping.

This has tag line potential.

[Korvac]

The very idea of losing used to be hateful to all real Americans (Patton at least in the movie), now just get paid and go shopping. That is more myth than true - Americans - judging by Olympic results - have only dominated after WW2 - before that the USA always did OK but we were not the world champs or the standard or anything like that. Jesse Owens was not a big deal not because he was black and defeated the then Nazi Germans (something that was played up later) but that he was an underdog American who won. I do know Americans don't do history well - organized sports are a young thing - remember prize boxing was illegal until maybe the late 1920s and early 30s. The first modern Olympics were only held in the later half of the 1800s and only came into their own in the early 1900s. The modern-modern Olympics (my phrase for it) where atheletes could actually earn sponsorship probably started in 1984 - 1988 and became a sneaker and sports apparel sponsored business in the 1990s. International baseball is still in its infancy. So don't get all bent out of shape about American not domionating a sport - we have not been around long enough in world competitions to claim dominance in many sports.

[dfwgator]

Yeah, but we still are #1 in American Football.

[Hong Kong Expat]

Relax, this team was built for 2008.
We've got 6 guys 22 or younger. Winning in 2006 would have been nice, but it's nowhere near a travesty. We could look at the silver lining there's no way our guys are going to be overconfident in 2008.

America is a victim of our own success, better athletes around the world are picking up our sports. This is keeping us from getting fat and lazy.