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CNN Live At Daybreak

Team USA Doing Great at Olympics

Aired February 21, 2002 - 06:25   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. Winter Olympics team is turning in its best performance ever at the Salt Lake Games.

CNN Tom Rinaldi tells us why.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM RINALDI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Can you find the one that doesn't belong: the New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Duke Blue Devils, Tiger Woods and the United States Winter Olympic Team? Trick question. All of a sudden they're juggernauts all.

CHRIS KLUG, SLALOM BRONZE MEDALIST: I'm just happy I can contribute to that total that we're at now and keep breaking the record.

TRAVIS MAYER, MOGULS SILVER MEDALIST: I think everybody after September 11 decided that you know this Olympic Games is going to be bigger than usual. This is a big deal. Our country is looking up to us. So everyone got their act together, and everyone started working hard, and I'm really not surprised to see all these great performances out here.

SHANNON BAHRKE, MOGULS SILVER MEDAL: Well all of our athletes, we're in perpetual winter, we don't just stay here. We get to go to Surmount (ph) and us training in Chili. So I think for us you know going to different places and actually being around that kind of environment I think has definitely helped us out at times (ph).

RINALDI: For Team USA the competitor snapshots have turned into winning portraits. The USOC predicted 20 medals for Team USA in these Games. That was shocking when you consider 13 was America's previous best. They've eclipsed that prediction. Ask the athletes and they'll tell you home soil advantage has made a medaling difference.

BRIAN MARTIN, LUGE SILVER MEDALIST: Everybody's really out there cheering us on and getting us pumped up for our competitions. And everybody's taking that positive energy that the crowd's providing and turning in phenomenal results.

MAYER: When we came out of the opening ceremonies with 60,000 people on their feet screaming for the United States, in a foreign country that wouldn't be the case. RINALDI: While much about Olympic competition is individual, America's Olympians came together long before opening ceremonies in a summit program before these Games began to form a true Team USA in more than name only.

NIKKI STONE, 1996 GOLD MEDALIST: There were eight Olympians and medalists who brought the athletes together three years out of the games and each year they would trade a training technique, they'd be working together, we would talk about things that worked or didn't work for them in different games.

MARK GRIMMETTE, LUGE SILVER MEDALIST: The medal hopefuls came together and we met one another and just really bonded as a U.S. -- whole U.S. Olympic Team.

RINALDI (on camera): While America's medal performance has certainly been impressive, it also requires perspective. At 1998 at Calgary there were 138 medals presented. At these Games, 234, a number that has swelled by the inclusion of many extreme sports, sports America invented and sports Team USA has been extremely successful at.

At the Winter Games in Utah, I'm Tom Rinaldi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: OK, so he hit us with a dose of reality.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: OK, just a lot of medals out there.

Thank you, Tom.

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