The closing ceremonies. Photo: Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

1) Eight for Eight: Nobody doubted that Michael Phelps could win each of the eight races—five individual and three relays—he entered. But could he win all of them in the Olympic hothouse, a feat that required him to swim 17 times over nine long days? Turns out he could—seven of them in world record times. But he needed a miracle relay leg by a teammate in one race and had to survive a photo finish (and Serbian protest) in another. The biggest record—eight gold medals in a single Olympics—should stand forever. Phelps’ total of 14 Olympic gold medals is the most by any athlete in history.

Photo: Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

3) China’s Gold Rush: It didn’t exactly come as a surprise. China almost caught the United States in gold medals in Athens and had pointed to Beijing as the Games in which they would assert their athletic supremacy. The results of world championships during the years from Athens to Beijing gave fair warning. Still, nobody was quite prepared for the landslide win, as China netted 51 gold medals to America’s 36. The U.S. still topped the charts in total medals (110-100), but with China’s population, the state sports system and unstinting investment, that seems unlikely to hold at the 2012 London Games. What keeps China-U.S. from becoming a great rivalry is that China excels at sports—table tennis, weightlifting, shooting, diving—in which American isn’t very competitive and which evoke little interest in our country. In the one sports, woman’s gymnastics, we do care about, there was plenty of consternation about the result, complaints about favorable “home” judging and allegations that the Chinese cheated with underage gymnasts.

4)Tragedy/Triumph: The tragedy at a popular Beijing tourist attraction was almost unimaginable—an attack by a knife-wielding Chinese man on the in-laws of U.S. men’s volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon. His father-in-law Todd Bachman was killed and Bachman’s wife, Barbara, seriously injured. The killer committed suicide so it is unlikely there will ever be an explanation for the bizarre crime in a city considered highly safe for tourists. Win it for the coach never had to be said out loud. But while McCutcheon was away from the Olympics with his family (he resumed coaching duties after four games), a U.S. volleyball team that hadn’t won a medal since a bronze in Barcelona back in 1992 caught fire. It went undefeated throughout the tournament, climaxing with a comeback win over defending Olympic champion Brazil. When McCutcheon called his wife back home in the States wand heard her, she exclaimed, “You won, you won!” Then he told reporters, “There was nothing left to say. We were just kind of listening to each other smile into the phone.” We smiled too. Maybe even cried a little.

5) Ballet on Bars and Beams: For a reporter a few stories become more personal. Years ago I became captivated by a 14-year-old gymnast who performed with a lyrical beauty that I had never seen from an American.. For NEWSWEEK’s annual, year-end “Who’s Next” issue, I am responsible for picking one young athlete who will make a splash. In 2006 I picked Liukin. But she was beset by a series of nagging injuries, and an Iowa sparkplug, Shawn Johnson, became America’s new gymnastics darling and the Beijing favorite. The American duo went 1-2 in the all-around in Beijing, but it was Liukin’s balletic performance that landed her on top. Johnson, with three silver medals already in hand, finally won a very happy gold on balance beam. But it was Liukin who went home to Texas with the biggest prize (as well as five Olympic medals).

6) The ‘We’ In American Teams: There has been a sneaking suspicion that American athletes had lost their grasp on the team thing. In recent years, our all-star teams have been humbled by international losses in sports that we dominate: basketball, golf and baseball. But in Beijing, most American teams excelled. Both men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball and water polo teams made it to the gold-medal games, as did the U.S. women’s softball and soccer teams. The U.S. went 4-4 in those finals, but this mother lode of team golds and silvers demonstrated that when they put their minds to it, Americans still know how to play well together.

7) The ‘Redeem Team’: The U.S. men’s basketball team had a lot to make up for--two miserable performances in the last two world championships and a dismal bronze at the Athens Olympics. But Kobe and company proved up to the task, thoroughly dominating the competition until the finals where they met defending world champion Spain. In a game far closer than the final scored indicated, the NBA stars responded to every Spanish challenge—and used their speed advantage and some clutch outside shooting to squeeze out a 118-107 win. They celebrated the gold medal with all the excitement of high-school kids who had won the state championship. Beyond the court, the NBA stars treated the competition with the respect the rest of the world gives it—and were goodwill ambassadors all over the Olympics, cheering on Americans from the women’s basketball team (undefeated gold medalists also) to Michael Phelps.

8) Going Solo: Even with the basketball team’s Olympic revival, there was no better tale of redemption than that of Hope Solo. Solo was the starting goalkeeper for an unbeaten U.S. women’s soccer team in last year’s World Cup when the American coach inexplicably benched her for the semi-final against Brazil. After Brazil thrashed the Yanks, Solo went off on him and, far worse, suggested she would have performed better than her replacement. It was an unconscionable moment by the sisterhood standards of American soccer and Solo was kicked off the team and sent home. But the new coach convinced reluctant team members—“Do you want to win? she asked them—to let Solo return for the Olympic run. Against, of course, Brazil in the finals, Solo was the standout star, shutting out a superior attack until the Americans muster a goal overtime. A jubilant Solo explained afterward that she had broken a new barrier in women’s sports: “we don’t all have to be friends.”

Photo: Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

9) China Beach: Just as it has been since beach volleyball was introduced to the Olympics, the rhythm of the beach was decidedly American—from the rock and roll to the Chinese cheerleaders in tiny bikinis. The results went America’s way too. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh won gold in the pouring rain and extended their astounding unbeaten streak to more than a year. The next day, the sun was shining on Phil Dalhauser and Todd Rogers, who completed the American sweep.

10) Butterfingers: There was, of course, one mortifying exception to all that good American team play: track’s 4X100 relay teams. The U.S. era of sprint dominance is clearly over and the Americans would have been underdogs to Jamaica in the relays anyway. Still, you don’t have a chance if you don’t get the baton around the track. And in the first preliminary heat, both the U.S. teams dropped it before the final leg. It is the third straight Olympics in which the American women have bungled the handling of the baton. If USA basketball can command Kobe Bryant and LeBron James to training camps, then USA Track and Field can force its sprinters to convene and practice their relay skills before each Olympics. It’s either that or more embarrassments on track’s biggest stage.

Photo: Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Some people predicted the 2008 Olympic spectacle would be worthy of Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite filmmaker whose theme for the 1936 Games was "Triumph of the Will". Instead, for the dazzling closing ceremony which brought the Olympics to a close tonight, we got Busby Berkeley reincarnated as an engineer. How else could you think up 60 furiously pedalling cyclists in glowing tracksuits propelling giant "light wheels" precisely 2.008 meters in diameter, symbolizing "the collision of time and space and the human spirit of constantly surpassing oneself and never giving up".

Or a massive 23-meter "Memory Tower" -- think Tower of Babel built with an erector set -- rising out of a pit in the ground, suddenly swarmed by 396 nimble climbers (in mountaineering kit) clad in tracksuits that are red on the underbelly and silver on the back, enabling the  men to create visual images, like the "sacred flame" and the "running man" symbol of the Beijing Games, by gyrating as they clung to the girders or scuttled scarab-like over the structure and abseiled down its sides?

Leading up to the Games, Beijing's tsars of sport took pains to lowball medals projections in the conservative fashion of its economic planners. In the end the Chinese squad far outstripped its softly stated goal of 40 golds. With 51, China is the first nation to crack the 50 mark since the USSR won 55 in 1988. It's a phenomenal achievement, but what to make of it? The host nation's sweet showing was undercut by bitter controversy over its female gymnasts' ages, the numbing disappointment of its sole track star Liu Xiang, and the perennial critique that Team China is just the latest gargantuan image project - if the Party builds it, the medals will come.

It therefore seemed fitting that China's last couple golds came in the embattled event of boxing. I spent much of the weekend in the circular gallery of the Workers Gymnasium, a musty gem of Soviet-inspired monumentalism. There I saw China's fighters scrap their way on up from a single bronze at Athens to one bronze, one silver and two gold medals in Beijing. One of those two golds, the country's first, was won by the reigning world champ without much of a fight. The other came courtesy of a dark horse with a motivational tattoo of a winged Pegasus on his left arm, not to mention a major boost from the crowd and the benefit of the doubt from the judges. If you think the regurgitated debate over medals rankings is going to be a tough one to ever resolve - given America's historic focus on cumulative medals versus China’s (and many other nations') on gold - try judging the victor of an Olympic boxing bout.

In the light heavyweight final, Zhang Xiaoping outmaneuvered Ireland's Kenny Egan by a tally of 11-7. It was Zhang's second straight upset, and if conventional wisdom in our press section was any indication, the scoring was dubious

Watching Nigeria play Argentina in the men’s soccer final this afternoon at the Bird’s Nest reminded me of a grievous oversight. Sitting in the stands, I was so appalled by the U.S. team's early departure from the tournament last week—2-1 at the feet of Nigeria—that I forgot to vent publicly.

The American team is good enough to compete with most anybody in the youth ranks—the Olympics is a under-23 affair (with three ringers). But it’s not nearly good enough that it can afford the kind of stupidity that in Beijing assured it wouldn’t survive the qualifying round.

Coachs’ sons are expected to be savvier than the average player. But the first dim-witted play came in the game before Nigeria against the Netherlands. In the waning moments, Michael Bradley, son of the coach of the U.S. senior men’s team, took an unnecessary and, even worse, futile, yellow card for delay of game. Granted it might not have mattered had the U.S. hung on to its lead, punching its ticket to the quarterfinals. But the Dutch scored in the final seconds and Bradley, thanks to his second yellow in two games, had to sit out the critical showdown with Nigeria. The 21-year-old is a key cog in the midfield, good enough that a week later he was in the starting lineup for his dad when the U.S. opened World Cup qualifying in Guatamala.

Still, Bradley’s stalling ploy classifies as genius next to the bone-headed retaliatory elbow that got defender Michael Orozco ejected just three minutes into the Nigeria game. The Americans, needing only a tie to advance, were game, but outmanned. And when a late rally fell short—a header clanged off the post—they were headed home.

Orozco compounded his sin afterwards by refusing to express a modicum of regret for his costly foul. But far worse was how coach Peter Nowak praised his team’s efforts in Beijing, acting as if U.S. soccer was still an interloper in the world’s game and couldn’t reasonably be expected to produce anything more than a first-round ouster. Nowak must have been sleeping through his team's brilliant performance against the European U-23 champ Netherlands, when his team looked the equal of any.

Fans of American soccer are used to folks around the world denigrating our game. But it's particularly galling when it comes from our own coach, who should know better. There is no longer any reason to have such meager expectations for a country that, despite its minimal traditions, has usurped Mexico as the leading soccer power in its region. The American game may not yet be at the level where we can expect the team to get out of the qualifying rounds, but it certainly is at the level where we can be disappointed when it doesn’t. While there may still be Pyrrhic victories to come for American soccer, losing in a preliminary round will never again produce one of them.

As for the Nigerian team that the U.S. barely lost to, it proceeded to beat Ivory Coast 2-0 in the quarters and to thrash Belgium 4-1 in the semis before it lost 1-0 to the defending Olympic champion Argentina. Who knows what the United States might have done if it had played with as much brains as it did heart?

The end of the U.S.-Nigeria soccer match. Photo by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

Ever heard of wushu? Most if not all of China's 1.3 billion people have. But contributor Fergus Naughton explains why you might not have. And why China's traditional martial arts are not competing with beach volleyball to snag Olympic spectators during the 2008 Games: 

     In 2001 when Beijing got the nod from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host the 2008 Games, it was hoped by many that wushu -- China's traditional practice of martial arts, also referred to as gong fu or kung fu --  would be accepted as a medal event seven years later. After all, South Korea got to introduce its indigenous martial art of taekwondo as an exhibition event in the Seoul '88 games. Surely wushu -- the ultimate synthesis of China's unique sporting tradition, martial ability, philosophy, religion, poetry, calligraphy, music, painting, drama and literature (to name but a few of the inputs) -- would be considered worthy as an exhibition event?

    It was not to be. IOC head Jacques Rogge declared in 2005 that wushu would not be added as an Olympic event. "We are not introducing wushu in the Olympic program," state media reported Rogge as then saying. "It will not be an exhibition, not at all," he said. This was an unimaginable kick in the face

Good thing the IOC killed Beijing’s idea, back in 2000, of Beach Volleyball on Tiananmen Square. It would never have been such a blast. Who could fathom the centerpiece of the 1989 carnage sandboxed for a fortnight a la playa? Who spiked Beijing boss Liu Qi’s tea before he had that idea, for that matter? As twisted and tactless as Liu's proposed site in the Square came off globally when the story first broke, it would not have played any better domestically today (even as memories of the 1989 crackdown fade from many Chinese minds, or never entered them in the first place.)  That's because the whole uptightness of the place could never have hosted flouncing beach gals in string bikinis, patriotic odes remixed to techno, and the favored Americans emerging triumphant in a sweep of gold: dude, not in the square. Chairman Mao would have been bummed.

      In the end Games organizers picked a  substitute locale, deep inside Chaoyang Park. It’s the capital’s biggest, least historic and most artificial park, known almost solely for the bawdy nightlife around it. And so it became an natural destination for the varied elements of beach volleyball: white sand brought in from Hainan island, blaring dance mash-ups spun by DJ Stari (an Athens vet from Austria), and the frat-boyish emcee “Geeter”, of the U.S. pro tour, firing up the crowd.

    At each break in the action, on came the aforementioned beach girls, the most shapely of all

Power and Grace: Misti May-Treanor of the U.S. in the 2008 Olympics gold medal match. Photo by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

By Ashley Harris

In the summer of  1996  I was formally introduced to spandex. Not long after my cousin, former U.S. National Volleyball Team member Penny Lucas-White, accepted the head women’s volleyball coaching position at the United States Air Force Academy; I spent the first of what would become many summers in Colorado Springs training with the some of the top players in the country. When I arrived for the first day of camp I was surrounded by young ladies my age who had at least two years playing experience on me. These girls wore their unadorned hair in high ponytails or buns. The sleeves of their t-shirts tucked lazily into the straps of their sports bras to keep arms bare, and yes, they had spandex on. Clearly, I missed the memo that an integral part of this sport is not only comfort, but also image, which are not mutually exclusive entities.

This is especially true in the beach variety of the game. Since the introduction of beach volleyball at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the two most frequently asked questions have all been variations on this theme: “Isn’t this terrible that the players are half-naked?” and “Isn’t this awesome that the players are half naked?” As a player I learned that the answers to both questions basically came down to this: Yes, there are a lot of practical and competitive reasons we wear these uniforms. And, no, sexualization of the sport isn’t one of them.

Sure, there are legion beach and indoor volleyball fans that tune in to watch hot girls in bikinis, and, you know, if there’s a game involved, so much the better. At least in the minds of some 15-year-old--or 60-year-old--males, watching taut, half-naked bodies drip in sweat as they dive into the sand is some version of nirvana, but there are actual reasons for the skimpy uniforms. First is comfort: the reduced amount of clothing helps cool body temperature in matches that are often played under a grueling mid-day sun. Some critics have argued that more dermis level injuries came from the lack of clothing. Possibly, but the majority of my injuries came from areas not normally covered by clothing anyway. I have left plenty skin on the court, but it came from my elbows, shins and wrists.

The uniforms are practical and more comfortable than wearing loose fitting clothing. Those first weeks of camp, while I was wearing my old baggy basketball shorts and t-shirts, I noticed the girls moved more efficiently on the court than I did. They seemed to jump higher and land faster. Not only did they seem lighter in the air, they were diving and getting up quicker - not drowning in mesh shorts that seemed to always get in my way. They were able to roll over their shoulder and see the net, not the hem of their shorts. Suddenly, my shorts felt like a parachute, impeding my blocking and hitting. Many of the players I admired, like the current U.S. women’s indoor captain Danielle Scott-Aruda, wore the smaller uniform and was able to command the court without looking self-conscious.

In fact, as I learned, it was just he opposite. There is nothing more intimidating than watching a group of twelve six-foot tall women slam a ball down at speeds of 90 mph and seeing nothing jiggle, wiggle or move on their bodies. Watch The University of Nebraska Lady Cornhuskers play one day. Watch May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. Watch the current Olympic team. They take their opponents out of the game before they step foot on the court by physical appearance alone. More than anything, they carried themselves like volleyball players. All sports have it, that certain swag that says “hey, I’m an athlete and I’ll kick your ass on the court/field/track/pool.” A 27-inch vertical didn’t matter to me anymore; I wanted to look like them.

I bought an acceptable pair of spandex shorts and a control top bikini to play in. At first, it was a bit of an unnerving, self-conscious experience. But soon noticed an improvement. I slid across the ground without worrying my shorts were going to fall off and expose my undies. I could get in the “ready” position--full squat, one foot slightly forward, and on the balls of my feet--prepared to pass the ball without having to constantly adjust my shorts before the whistle blew. The same applied with beach volleyball. Shorts and shirts were for amateurs. The effect was the same, I wasn’t stuck in my clothing after diving in the sand, I wasn’t fooling around with the waistband of my shorts and I wasn’t overheating under the blazing Colorado sun. Plus, I looked like I was about to hurt someone’s feelings on the court. As the years went on and I became a serious player, the shorts got shorter and the uniforms got tighter. It was great not to get stuck in my shirt or my teammates shirt when coming down from blocking the ball in tandem.

So to the naysayers I say, get over it. Consider that beach volleyball athletes have the option to wear one-piece bathing suits, but the majority choose not to. There’s function to the form, and as these gold medals keep rolling in from our nation’s top volleyball competitors people will soon remember that this is sport, not mud-wrestling.

 Duncan Hewitt in Shanghai reports on a new trend in Chinese media, which has begun revealing personal stories and quirks of Olympic athletes:

We all know Chinese authorities are just a tiny bit concerned about how their country is perceived, both by foreigners and their own citizens, as a result of these Olympics. “We are an image-conscious nation – we do house-cleaning when guests visit,” announced the official China Daily in an angry editorial denouncing foreign criticism of the Games last week.  This ‘image-consciousness’ has been a sub-theme of everything from ultra-tight security to the politburo-level intervention in the choice of the little girl who sang at the opening ceremony.  And state media are of course doing their bit to present a picture of a harmonious, confident, and increasingly important nation: “Beijing brings happiness to the world,” and “Beijing has made the Olympics more genuinely global in nature” are just two of the front page headlines run by the always on-message tabloid The Global Times over the past fortnight.

For journalists, the Olympics is a marathon, not a sprint. But today is my sprint version, touching briefly on 10 items of Beijing business that are on my mind.

1) What an embarrassment that the IOC president Jacques Rogge bashed Jamaican superstar sprinter Usain Bolt for over-celebrating. Bolt has been one of the most appealing and engaging athletes of the Games and nobody I talked to thought his style reflected any disrespect for his rivals. Why doesn’t the IOC pick on somebody its own size? Like China maybe. It couldn’t work up the same righteous indignation when the Chinese reneged on key agreements like dispersal of information. And now they have reluctantly taken up the matter of China’s transparently underage gymnasts, flagrant cheating that is the moral and practical equivalent of doping.

2) The Beijing Games may be the best competitive Olympics I have seen in my long tenure. And credit the Chinese with brilliant organization and execution. But the obsession with security and keeping the buses running on time has kept us in a cocoon. There are no casual intersections between reporters and real people from Beijing—unless you leave the sports arena and venture into the city. But when most of us venture out, it’s to the not-so-real city, the tourist places like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. I loved how at the Sydney Olympics total strangers would beckon and say, “Buy you a beer, mate.” Here the Chinese who approach want only to take our picture—not even with them, but alone. We are simply curiosities

3) When I was a younger man, the winner of the medal count was the country that won the most medals. Somewhere along the way that switched and gold took on a primacy. Now the country that tops the charts is the one that wins the most gold. That will be China for the first time (and presumably forever now), though they probably won’t catch the United States in total medals. But the U.S. Olympic Committee today suggested a new, improved method of counting that would boost America’s standing: the total number of athletes who leave Beijing with gold medals around their necks. That new view is a reflection of the renewed strength of the United States in virtually all the team competitions.

4) The American softball team exited Beijing and the Olympics on a teary note. But the upset loss to Japan may come back to help them when the IOC considers reinstating softball for the 2016 Games. One of the complaints that led to softball getting booted from the Olympics in the first place was America’s dominance of the sport. With Tokyo and Chicago two of the four contenders to host the 2016 Olympics, that American loss could pay dividends when the IOC votes on softball’s future in the fall of 2009.

5) You couldn’t help but sympathize with the Brazilian women’s soccer coach, whose team had outplayed the Americans for the second straight Olympics and lost the gold medal in overtime for a second straight time. Brazil could have used a victory to bolster the support for the women’s game at home and perhaps throughout Latin American, where it is given short shrift. Still, he had nothing to be embarrassed about when it came to his team’s performance. The same can’t be said about Dunga, the Brazilian men’s coach. Brazil has not only abandoned its “beautiful game”, but it has adopted an ugly one, embracing the thuggish tactics of underskilled squads. Pele and others must be weeping as they watch.

6) The most frequent question we reporters are asked in correspondence from home is: What do you think of the NBC coverage? We see none of the NBC coverage so we have no opinions. If we see the Olympics on TV, it is on a private Olympic broadcast or on CCTV, Chinese television. CCTV has revealed to me the universality of sports broadcasting. Having watched so much sports on TV, I feel like I know what the Chinese commentators are saying based on the pitch of their voices.

7) The most pleasant surprise for the American team at these games is the indoor volleyball revival, with both the U.S. men and women reaching the gold-medal game. The biggest disappointment, without a doubt, is the track and field team. None of the biggest names on the team—Tyson Gay, Allyson Felix, Jeremy Wariner, Bernard Lagat, the shotput trio, Lolo Jones—took gold. And the performance in the 4X100 relay—dropped batons by both the men and the women was an embarrassment. It’s getting to be a bad habit. If U.S.A. basketball can command Kobe and LeBron to make a three-year commitment, can’t U.S.A. Track & Field stage a mandatory relay camp for its sprinters? The only consolation was that both teams spared themselves a whipping by Jamaica. As one press wag handicapped the men’s race, “For the U.S. to beat Jamaica, they would not only have to drop the baton, but lose it completely.” (Update: The Jamaican relay teams one-upped the Americans in every way. The women dropped the baton and, in their desperation, managed to collide with the British runners and knock them out of the race too; the men, however, held on and set a world record--a third world record for Bolt in one week!)

8) It’s been years now since Hollywood told us what all sports fans already knew: “White Men Can’t Jump.” But America’s black jumpers have come up short and low at this Olympics too. It would be bad enough that no American won a medal in the long jump, the high jump and the triple jump, events at which the country has long excelled. But no American even reached the finals. Are all our leapers going for the bigger money in basketball?

9) What the United States needs to catch the Chinese at future Olympics is more new “X” sports that were invented in America. Today was the debut of BMX and, while the American riders did not win a gold, they took three of the six medals. Can't do that in the longstanding Olympic cycling competitions. Where would the American medal count be, winter or summer, without the steady addition of non-traditional Olympics sports like half-pipe, short-track speedskating, snowboard cross and beach volleyball?

10) Sorry, boss. I have no idea who Michael Phelps may have been necking with at some party and—I know this comes as a shock—I couldn’t care less.

In her Asia Rising column, Melinda Liu writes on the debate in China about the country's obsession with bringing home the most Olympic gold medals:

China's shock—some called it "mourning"—over champion hurdler Liu Xiang's withdrawal due to injury Monday from the Olympics is bigger than a single athlete, albeit a very charismatic one. His dramatic pullout has roiled discussion on a number of delicate subjects, from government transparency (or lack thereof) to flaws in the Soviet-style sports system to sponsors' pressures on athletes—and most importantly to China's obsession with a home-team Olympic "Gold Rush." Officials and citizens alike had made little attempt to conceal their goal of winning the most gold medals at these Games, supplanting the American sports superpower as No. 1, at least in golds. Liu's anticipated gold had been seen as special; it symbolized the rare example of an Asian's ability to dominate a track and field event.

But instead of grabbing gold, Liu hobbled off the track. Now the current period of soul-searching "is a good opportunity to debate this 'Gold Rush'," says Dong Jun, an announcer from the Beijing Games organizing committee. He believes it's time to re-examine the centralized and elitist "going for gold" approach. At the other end of the spectrum is what Chinese call the "sports for all" attitude that would treat athletes less like robots and more like, well, people who play sports because it's fun.

READ THE FULL COLUMN HERE

An 'I' in Team: The U.S. women celebrate. Photo by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

That notion was supposed to be at the core of the next generation of U.S. women's team players. But the 2007 World Cup in China revealed that it had never completely taken hold. The implosion came after starting goalkeeper Hope Solo, who had backstopped the team without a loss to the semi-finals, was benched against Brazil in favor of the veteran, Briana Scurry. Scurry was hardly the only problem that day when a quicker, more talented Brazilian team kicked the U.S. women 4-0. But afterward, Solo mouthed off, indicating not only her displeasure at being sidelined, but insisting that she would have fared better than Scurry, a hero of the ’99 World Cup triumph.

Trashing a teammate and a coach was something a man would do and the team reacted with predictable fury. No longer was Solo just benched, she was booted off the team and on her way home before the U.S. team, with Scurry in goal, won the bronze medal game. The loss and the subsequent mess cost coach Greg Ryan his job. His replacement, Pia Sundhage, a Swede and the first non-American to coach the U.S. women’s national team, faced a lot of resistance when she invited Solo back. But she insisted that Solo was critical to the team's Olympic hopes. “Do you want to win?” she asked the players.

And last night with Solo in the nets, the United States—in the kind of delicious irony that sport so often serves up—faced heavily favored Brazil again, this time for the Olympic gold medal. Could the woman who had so recklessly shed one legacy be the mainstay in rescuing another—winning?

For 90 minutes, the 27-year-old Solo did everything possible to keep the United States in the gold-medal chase. She gobbled up balls without a stumble or a fumble, executed perfectly timed dashes to beat the speedy Brazilian forwards to the ball and punched out several dangerous corner kicks that she couldn’t snare. And in the 72^nd minute when the brilliant Marta dribbled through two U.S. defenders and fired inside post, Solo knocked away what looked to be a sure goal with her right forearm as she was falling to her left. The Brazilian coach would say later he was already getting to his feet to celebrate.

In the 89^th minute, U.S. forward Amy Rodriguez had the fairytale ending on her foot. After a game in which Brazil had frequently looked dangerous—it had 14 corner kicks to the U.S.’s  3 and possessed the ball 58 percent of the game—and the U.S. hadn’t, Rodriguez slipped through the Brazilian defense and went in alone on the goalkeeper. But rather than try to go around the keeper, who had ventured out, she tried to loft the ball softly over her and didn’t get it above her fingertips.

Sometimes you just have to work overtime for redemption. While Solo remained unflappable, keeping the potent Brazilian attack at bay, the ball finally took a big bounce America’s way in the sixth minute of the 30-minute overtime session, This time when Rodriguez got the ball at the top of the box, she knew exactly what to do with it. She slid it over to midfielder Carli Lloyd, the team’s best outside gun and the one player who had been outspoken in defense of Solo. Lloyd fired a left-footer, diagonally from about 19 yards out, and the ball just slid past the outstretched left hand of the sprawling Brazilian keeper.

The Brazilians never stopped threatening and fired away on Solo throughout the second half of overtime. But their shots were always just wide or just over the net. On one free kick from 30 yards out, Solo appeared to be screened because she never moved on the ball, but it skittered wide right. In the final minute, Brazil had two more golden opportunities; Solo punched one out of danger and sprawled to deflect the second wide. When the final whistle blew and the U.S. had held on for a 1-0 victory, Solo raised her arms in triumph and charged upfield and into the middle of her jubilant teammates.

Welcome: Solo after the match. Photo by Donald Miralle for Newsweek

But soon she was alone at the end of the field, talking on a cellphone to her brother back home in Washington. Later when she was asked if she felt fully part of the team now, she suggested that maybe she had been a pioneer—like Hamm, though she never suggested that—in changing roles in women’s sports. “We don’t have to be best friends,” she said of her and her teammates. But she clearly felt some burden had been lifted. “I can be myself now without looking over my shoulder,” she said. “I’m free to be myself now.” Asked if she felt vindicated, she simply said, “I feel amazing.”

Nobody will ever know if Solo would have made a difference against Brazil in the World Cup a year ago. And maybe her decidedly unsisterly comments were bad form. But in old-fashioned parlance, if she talked the talk back then, tonight she certainly walked the walk. Solo was all the difference. And thanks above all to her heroic efforts, the United States women’s soccer team has added another gold medal—probably the most surprising in its storied history--to its vast treasure trove.

It’s hard to explain to friends back home, deeply envious of my privilege to go to any Olympic event I choose, why sometimes I prefer to watch the events in my office on the closed-circuit Olympic broadcast rather than watch them from prime press seats in the stands. The answer in a word: rain!

When my pal Filip woke me early this morning to tell me not to worry, that he had already confirmed that the beach volleyball final would be played regardless, I sensed that I wasn’t hearing entirely good news. I pulled back the shades in my room, glanced out the window and made the kind of spur-of-the-moment decision the truly great journalist must always be prepared for. Misty and Kerri had no choice but to play in a downpour—“that’s another reason we wear bathing suits,” Misty May-Treanor told reporters—but I could opt to stay dry back at the Main Press Center.

Apart from the comfort of dry clothes, there are certain professional advantages to staying away as well. Even with a bus system that, in my long Olympic tenure, deserves the gold medal for both efficiency and courtesy, the rigors of traveling to and fro pretty much limit you two events a day. But sit in front of the tube, with its 39 Olympic channels and a grandmaster like Al on the clicker, and you can see virtually every play of every game of every sport. At one point, Al was going back and forth so fast that I thought our heavyweight wrestler had just spiked a winner on the beach through the Chinese pair.

The biggest bonus today was that a time when I would have been riding the bus back from the “beach”, I got to see the a real volleyball game instead. Now I am not so old that the appeal of beach volleyball is lost on me. With all due respect to our women's gold-medal duo, May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, who are not only sensational athletes but among my all-time, favorite Olympians, beach volleyball would not rate NBC prime-time live if not for the dimensions of the uniform and the hardbodies that are uncovered by them. (That is equally true for the men’s game.) And while the downpour might render me a sodden mess, it certainly had the players’ bodies glistening—sweat to the nth degree. (I am told that the Chinese were at first appalled by such immodesty among its athletes, but, with two duos in the women’s final four, they have obvious adjusted to our dubious Western ways.)

I know it is heresy to say this, but absent the titillation (and the rock and roll that punctuates the game), the beach version is simply not as interesting a game as traditional indoor volleyball. The six-on-a-side game has longer, more spectacular rallies and more variety in both play and strategy. Frankly, I had kind of forgotten how compelling the old-fashioned volleyball can be. I suspect that’s because we journalists are parochial and U.S. teams haven’t been serious medal contenders since both the men and women took bronze in Barcelona back in 1992.

But in Beijing we have witnessed an American revival. The men’s team is undefeated and will play Russia in the semis tomorrow. And today the American women played almost the perfect game to reach the finals, sweeping a Cuban team that had shut them out three sets to none just 10 days ago. These women sweat too, but it is not a sideshow; the rivulets simply disappear into their uniforms rather than their bellybuttons. They also leap, dive and sprawl with precious little regard for their bodies, the floor being a bit less forgiving than the sand.

Chacun a son gout, but I’m going against the flow and casting my lot with our indoor volleyballers. Frankly, it was such a pleasure watching the American women’s combination of power and precision, grit and finesse that it was like a day at the beach.

 Contributor Jennifer Conrad continues her tour of National Houses in Beijing:

      A friend with IOC connections put me on the guest list for the London House, but when I arrived the person manning the door said he didn't have the list, and I needed to call someone inside to bring me to the check-in desk. My friends were on their way in a taxi, so I waited outside. Then we had to find someone to let us in, in order to be checked off the guest list. (How did the first party guest get in? I don't know!) This process continued throughout the night as other friends arrived; someone joked that the security was tighter than at the Olympic venues. But after flashing our passports, going through a metal detector, getting wanded, and having our bags x-rayed, we found a beautiful outdoor space with an open bar, barbecue, and Chinese dishes.

     I asked someone how this was supposed to promote the London Olympics, if no one was allowed in. He responded that the event was really for networking and feeling important. No wonder the scene was so sedate. At 12:30, the lights were abruptly turned on full blast, then turned off again, leaving everyone in total darkness. Apparently, it was the organizers way of saying it was time to go.

...London House, before the lights went out