Pan Am Games

HAVANA -- Don't panic.That was the message issued by United States Olympic Committee president Robert Helmick yesterday midway through the Pan American Games.While the Cubans are hoarding gold medals like U.S. dollars, the Americans are settling for the Pan Am equivalent of pesoes -- silvers and bronzes. Cubans are dominating track and field and weightlifting. They kayoed the U.S. women's basketball team and got a gold in men's platform diving."We've got a great team here," Helmick said during a briefing.

Men's track and field Douglass alum Wiley to coach Team USA at Junior Pan Am Games Baltimore native Cliff Wiley has been named the head men's coach for Team USA at the 2013 Junior Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, USA Track & Field announced Friday. This is the Douglass alumnus' first appointment as a head coach after serving USA Track & Field teams as the head manager of the 2004 IAAF World Junior Championships. Wiley, currently the head girls track and field coach at Washington High School in Kansas City, Kan., will lead a squad of approximately 40 16- to 19-year-olds.

HAVANA -- George Steinbrenner is mad as hell and won't take it anymore.So what else is new?The United States Olympic Committee vice president and banished New York Yankees owner, sounded off on the lack of U.S. big-name track-and-field talent at the Pan Am Games yesterday."

From the moment the U.S. women's field hockey team earned an Olympic berth with a stunning upset of Argentina in the Pan American Games last year, coach Lee Bodimeade has worried his team would pay for it here. The powerhouse Argentine team had not lost a single game in the Pan-Am Games in the previous 25 years. To lose to the United States - a squad that had never beaten them in major competition - was considered a humiliation by both the Argentine players and their rabid fan base.

HAVANA -- OK, so you're Carl Lewis and you have a chance to tour Europe during the first two weeks in August, picking up lucrative paychecks for racing at meets in Switzerland and Italy and preparing for the most important track and field event of the year, the World Championships.Or you could turn down the money and spend a few days in an apartment for four without air conditioning in steamy Havana, worrying about the quality of the water and the food, before finally running and jumping for free in a slightly frayed event called the Pan American Games.

HAVANA -- OK, so you're Carl Lewis and you have a chance to tour Europe during the first two weeks in August, picking up lucrative paychecks for racing at meets in Switzerland and Italy and preparing for the most important track and field event of the year, the World Championships.Or you could turn down the money and spend a few days in an apartment for four without air conditioning in steamy Havana, worrying about the quality of the water and the food, before finally running and jumping for free in a slightly frayed event called the Pan American Games.

HAVANA -- The first victory of the Pan American Games is that the facilities are done.Just don't look too closely at the peeling paint, or the cracked concrete, or the toilets that don't flush, or the plumbing that leaks, or the pools that are filled with murky water, or the track that is littered with cigarette butts.Eight months ago, these sites were all just dirt roads and empty shells, a hope and a dream for a country on economic life support. But now, the main venues that overlook the sea east of Havana are built, constructed in the nick of time for tomorrow's ready-or-not opening ceremony that begins a 16-day athletic carnival among 39 nations of the Western Hemisphere.

HAVANA -- They were the immovable object of women's basketball, a team with 10 professionals, five former Olympians and seven players taller than 6 feet.They were carrying a 42-game international winning streak, gobbling up gold medals at two Olympics, two World Championships, two Goodwill Games and two Pan American Games.And then, the American women ran into the Brazilians. Yesterday, before a swaying, flag-waving crowd, Brazil shocked the United States, 87-84, in an opening-round match at the Pan Am Games.

HAVANA -- The Pan American Games men's basketball competition is likely to become a 22-and-under tournament beginning in 1995, according to the president of the sport's governing body in the Americas."

* Capsule of yesterday's final events.SWIMMING* U.S. swimmers won five of the six final events, giving them 24 of 32 gold medals -- their worst performance in the 40-year history of the Games. The best U.S. swimmers skipped the Pan Am Games to prepare for the Pan Pacific Games in Edmonton, Alberta, this week. The United States won 49 of 58 medals overall.Ron Karnaugh of Maplewood, N.J., won the 200 individual medley in 2:00.92, second-fastest time in the world this year and a Pan Am Games record.

In a recent TV commercial, he plays Lau, the hapless badminton player whose leg is impaled by a shuttlecock launched from the racket of baseball's "Big Papi," David Ortiz. In his native Laos, he's known as Khankham Malaythong. But here, in his adopted homeland, you can call him Bob. "I am Bob now, legally," says Malaythong, 26, pulling his U.S. passport out of his pocket as evidence. You also can call him one of more than a dozen Marylanders competing in the Pan American Games, which began yesterday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

If playing for a national team is just about every player's dream, this summer has given Ellicott City's Lauren Molinaro not only a better idea of where she is but also what she needs to do to progress, and maybe a taste of the future."

Most people mistake Ryan Olkowski for a basketball player. At 6 feet 4, 150 pounds, he has the height and agility to play seriously, but doesn't anymore. This 19-year-old Penn State sophomore from Perry Hall uses his athleticism on the track instead.Last week, after six jumps, Olkowski claimed a silver medal in the long jump at the Junior Pan Am Games in Tampa, Fla. He captured second with a leap of 24 feet, 2 inches, but at a price: a swollen, bandaged leg after spiking himself earlier in the meet.

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina -- Eighteen months ago, when a delegation from the U.S. Olympic Committee arrived in Argentina to check on preparations for the XIIth Pan American Games, the officials were startled at what they found.Half-built arenas, seedy hotels, an overgrown baseball field, an organizing committee in virtual disarray."We wondered," said Sandy Baldwin, "if they would ever pull it off."Baldwin has been the Pan Am Games chef du mission, or team leader, for the U.S. contingent of 1,200 athletes, coaches and support personnel.

Distance runner Amanda White is still going.The Dulaney graduate and The Baltimore Sun's two-time Female Athlete of the Year, was a 3,000-meter runner-up Sunday to the University of Arkansas' Shelly Taylor in the United States Track and Field Junior Nationals in Spokane, Wash.The effort earned her a spot on the U.S. national junior team, which competes in the July 15-17 Pan Am Junior Games in Winnipeg, Manitoba. White, who captured 19 state titles in track and cross country, competed in the July 1992 Pan Am Games as a swimmer in the 200 and 400 individual medleys and the 100 and 200 breaststrokes.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Before the Dream Team, there was Nightmare One (the 1987 Pan Am Games) and Nightmare Two (the 1988 Olympics). David Robinson is the only member of the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team who was part of both."

HAVANA -- U.S. swimmers won five of the six final events, giving them 24 of 32 gold medals -- their worst performance in the 40-year history of the games.The best U.S. swimmers skipped the Pan Am Games to prepare for the Pan Pacific Games in Edmonton, Alberta, this week.Ron Karnaugh of Maplewood, N.J., won the 200 individual medley in 2 minutes, .92 second, second-fastest time in the world this year and a Pan Am Games record. Ray Looze of Belmont, Calif., finished third.Alex Kostich of Belmont, Mass.

HAVANA -- The game had everything. Ebb and flow of offense. Exceptional goaltending. Overtime. Goals by the youngest player on the U.S. soccer team and, when he was injured, by his replacement. A raucous group of Mexican fans. A fracas between the teams afterward.All in all, it was quite a spectacle as the United States beat Mexico 2-1 last night for the first Pan American Games gold medal in U.S. soccer history.This group of players ages 23 and under went through the tournament with a 5-0 record, becoming only the third champion in 11 Pan Am Games to finish unbeaten and untied.

The good news out of the recent Pan-American Games in Havana, Cuba, was that Karen Long of Edgewater came home last weekend with a bronzemedal in her hand.Long, a Snipe and Laser sailor who belongs to the Severn Sailing Association in Annapolis, competed in the Women's Laser Radial class at the Pan-Ams and placed third in a highly competitive fleet of six, behind Canadian Schona Moss and Brazilian Maria Schell.Four days of practice and one full-scale practice race were all that could be completed in the face of regular thundersqualls each afternoon during the practice period.

* Capsule of yesterday's final events.SWIMMING* U.S. swimmers won five of the six final events, giving them 24 of 32 gold medals -- their worst performance in the 40-year history of the Games. The best U.S. swimmers skipped the Pan Am Games to prepare for the Pan Pacific Games in Edmonton, Alberta, this week. The United States won 49 of 58 medals overall.Ron Karnaugh of Maplewood, N.J., won the 200 individual medley in 2:00.92, second-fastest time in the world this year and a Pan Am Games record.