PARIS, France — As Friday's action at the Paris Olympics came to a close, Team USA was again staring up in the official medal table.
That's the medal table that counts golds above all else -- not the one often seen in American media that simply counts any gold, silver or bronze ( the one that British media have not shied from critiquing).
For the past couple decades, the U.S. has usually topped the table in golds (2008 being an exception, when China had a dozen more golds than the U.S. as they hosted the Olympics in Beijing).
But this year, Team USA has continued to lag a little bit. Why might that be?
Why doesn't Team USA have more gold medals so far at the Paris Olympics?
Well, a perhaps overly simple and obtuse explanation would be that our athletes are doing a little less better than they might have in the past, and the athletes from other countries are doing a little bit better.
But that explanation isn't really instructive in any way, so let's take a deeper dive.
- Where we stand so far: First, accounting for where Team USA has won gold. Those events are men's swimming 4x100m freestyle relay, women's fencing foil (Lee Kiefer), women's swimming 100m butterfly (Torri Huske), women's gymnastics team all-around, women's swimming 1500m freestyle (Katie Ledecky), women's fencing team foil, women's gymnastics individual all-around (Simone Biles), men's rowing fours, women's swimming 200m breaststroke (Kate Douglass). That's in one week of competition.
- What about three years ago? In the first seven days of the Tokyo Olympics, Team USA had won 14 golds. At the 2016 Olympics in Rio, Virginia Thrasher actually won the first gold of the Games in a shooting event, and after seven days Team USA had a whopping 20 golds.
- So what gives? Part of it of course is just the schedule -- three years ago, for instance, Vincent Hancock (skeet shooting) won gold in the opening days of the Tokyo Games. This year, Hancock's event doesn't decide a medal until tomorrow (Day 8 of the Olympics). Other Week 1 golds for the U.S. in Tokyo that haven't been decided yet in Paris include women's taekwondo 57kg (Anastasija Zolotic), women's skeet (Amber English), women's surfing shortboard (Carissa Moore) and women's 3x3 basketball.
- But the schedule gives and takes, right? Well, in comparing the U.S. in Paris to the U.S. in Tokyo, it actually is the case that all the "new" golds we've picked up (women's team gymnastics, women's 100m butterfly, women's fencing team foil, men's rowing fours and women's 200m breaststroke) are golds that were also given in the first week of the Tokyo Olympics. So, at least so far, many of Team USA's "missing" golds are just farther back in the schedule in Paris, while it's not the case that any of the "new" golds are coming from later parts of the Tokyo schedule -- in short, the schedule is a solid net loss for Team USA to this point.
- But it's obviously not just the schedule: No, it's not. Take another Georgia-connected athlete, Chase Kalisz (UGA grad). He won gold in Tokyo in the men's swimming 400m individual medley, but three years later the 30-year-old had slowed a little and did not reach the event's final.
So, where are there more examples like Kalisz's? A lot of it has been swimming (there was also one shooting gold lost).
There are, so far, five swimming golds that Team USA won in Tokyo that haven't been retained in Paris. Those include:
- Men's 400m individual medley (Kalisz won in Tokyo, was out in heats in Paris, while Carson Foster won bronze)
- Women's 100m breaststroke (Lydia Jacoby won in Tokyo, did not make Team USA for Paris, and Lilly King came fourth in Paris)
- Men's 100m freestyle (Caeleb Dressel won in Tokyo, did not compete in this event in Paris, U.S. swimmers were 7th and 8th in Paris)
- Men's 800m freestyle (Robert Finke won in Tokyo, he got silver in Paris)
- Men's 50m freestyle (Dressel won in Tokyo, he came sixth in Paris)
In a lot of those cases, it's simply American swimmers falling off a little and the world catching up.
What about the rest of the Olympics?
Team USA has a lot of golds to defend if they want to replicate where they've been in the medal table in recent Olympics. Here are the Team USA Tokyo golds that have yet to be contested in Paris:
- Women's taekwondo 57kg
- Men's skeet shooting
- Women's skeet shooting
- Women's surfing shortboard
- Women's 3x3 basketball
- Men's swimming 100m butterfly
- Women's swimming 800m freestyle
- Men's golf
- Men's swimming 1500m freestyle
- Men's swimming 4x100m medley relay
- Women's discus throw
- Women's gymnastics floor exercise
- Women's track 800m
- Women's wrestling 68kg
- Women's track 400m hurdles
- Men's shot put
- Women's pole vault
- Women's canoeing C-1 200m
- Men's wrestling freestyle 86kg
- Women's beach volleyball
- Men's wrestling freestyle 125kg
- Men's track 4x400m relay
- Women's track 4x400m relay
- Men's 5x5 basketball
- Women's golf
- Women's water polo
- Women's 5x5 basketball
- Women's cycling omnium
- Women's volleyball
That's a lot of golds! We're naturally gonna win 'em all again, right?
Well, ah, no, possibly not.
Just to take one early example, our women's 3x3 basketball team went 6-1 in pool play in Tokyo and won two matches to earn gold -- in Paris they're only 3-3 so far and likely to miss out on one of the automatic semifinal spots they clinched three years ago. So that's not looking great.
Men's golf could be a tossup, too. Xander Schauffele is tied after two rounds for the lead at 11-under, but he's also got Tommy Fleetwood and Hideki Matsuyama right alongside him. Women's volleyball also has a loss to China in pool play that they should be able to overcome to reach the knockout rounds, but it's not in the bag yet. This stuff is fluid.
But we'll win some other golds, right?
As noted earlier, Team USA has already picked up some "new" golds.
And, yes, that of course is likely to happen in at least a few more events in Paris.
So it'll all wash out with Team USA at the top of the medal table again, right?
It is way too early to be able to tell. But maybe!