BEIJING - Peter Ueberroth has done the math and it is daunting.

It tells him his China problem is only going to get bigger; that the Summer Games of Beijing were more of a clue than a culmination; that the host nation's ravenous appetite for raw materials applies to gold, silver and bronze as it does to oil and natural gas.

The chairman of the United States Olympic Committee predicts the Chinese will exceed the 100 medals they won here four years hence in London.

That opinion is not popular, Ueberroth admits, but it is virtually inescapable.

"We understand the Chinese team is fantastic, clearly both with resources and their effort in every single sport," Ueberroth said during his wrap-up news conference in Beijing. "The USOC is going to have to be smarter, be better funded and we really need to do grassroots in sports we do well in ... "We're going to have to redouble our efforts in future Games."

Unless those efforts include procreation and regimentation, however, keeping pace could prove impossible.

With a population estimated at 1.3 billion, China's pool of potential athletes is more than four times that of the United States. With a government dedicated to development across the entire range of Olympic sports — and all of the excesses that implies — Chinese dominance would appear predestined.

"China has been systematically targeting every single available medal, and we're going to have to do that in the future," Ueberroth said. "It's going to be very difficult. The resources that (the Chinese) put toward their Olympic team and the population base and the dedication is fantastic. It's much more difficult for the rest of the world to compete, but that's the way it should be."

The 110 medals Team USA won in Beijing represented its largest haul since the Eastern bloc boycotted Ueberroth's 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Because that medal count included some breakthroughs (by Michael Phelps, for example, and in fencing), America's poor showings in track and field and boxing did not generate as much grief as they might have in other Olympiads.

Yet China's competitive progress, and particularly its 51 gold medals, created an unsettling and unflattering backdrop for the U.S. efforts. Though many of the Chinese medals were earned in sports Americans don't take seriously — badminton and table tennis, for example — the trend line is troubling.

From an operational standpoint, the Beijing Games were a model of efficiency. In terms of ambience, things were a tad sterile. Yet for those who judge the success of an Olympics by their country's medals count (just guessing, but that might be most of us), Beijing was a mixed bag.

When Pierre de Coubertin founded the modern Olympic Games, he did so on the quaint notion that taking part meant more than winning. His was the view of an elitist dilettante, and completely inconsistent with contemporary attitudes toward competition and excellence.

Now, it's all about the numbers, so much so that charts showing the United States with the most total medals with China atop the gold count have left some spectators clamoring for clarity.

People have suggested the assignment of specific point values to Olympic medals, based on their denomination. The USOC's hierarchy, meanwhile, has let it slip that if team sports medals were counted as one per athlete rather than one per team, America would have the most gold medals, too.

"We will not abandon those sports in an attempt to earn medals in individual sports," said Jim Scherr, chief executive officer of the USOC.

Translated: NBC still likes basketball better than archery.

From a big-picture perspective, Ueberroth sees the success of American team sports as a motivation for more kids to climb off the couch and engage in exercise.

"What's good for us as a country is overall participation," Ueberroth said. "We're fascinated, like any country, with gold medals. But what's more important is for team sports to do well, because that's what gets kids out of chairs and playing."

The long view is that sports have value even when the local team is not competitive. Shorter-term, China is forcing the USOC to reassess and to rationalize.

Tim Sullivan covered the Beijing Olympics for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Contact him at tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com

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