When they were in disarray, changing bosses, bickering among themselves, the leaders of the US Olympic Committee never forgot their main mission: To help athletes win medals. So far in Vancouver, it's been hard to argue with those results. The US team headed into Saturday night's action with 22 medals, a commanding eight-medal lead over second-place Germany. The United States also had six golds, one more than Norway, and was in position to break its record of 34 medals and win the overall medal count for the first time since 1932 in Lake Placid. Buried among the hundreds of negative stories about the US Olympic movement over the last year was news, last June, that the USOC was adding $16.5 million to the coffers of America's winter sports, bringing the total funding for the four-year period to $58.2 million. That was a 55 percent increase over 2003-06 despite the ailing economy. Some of that money has been used to open the US Ski and Snowboard Association's 1-year-old Center of Excellence in Park City, Utah, where many elite athletes train. Some has been used to fund winter sports training at centers in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Lake Placid, N.Y. “The process is, they come to us and say, ‘This is the kind of program we want. These are the kind of resources we need,”' said Scott Blackmun, who last month became the USOC's third CEO in 11 months. “Our job is to allocate the resources to the NGBs based on where we think they're going to have the greatest impact.” Thus far, the money given to the US Ski and Snowboard Association has been well spent.
