WASHINGTON, Aug 7: The Olympics are still a year away but the United States and China are already exchanging verbal volleys over who will take top spot at the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Keen to avoid the psychological pressure of going into the Aug 8-24 event as the favourites, the Chinese are busily playing down their chances.

“We are so far behind the US, it is a serious worry,” Cui Dalin, deputy head of China’s Olympic Committee, said last week at a press conference called specifically to draw attention to weaknesses in China’s Olympic team. US topped the gold medal table at the Athens Olympics in 2004 with 36. China was second with 32 and Russia came third with 27.

But in their push to overtake the US, China has spent a king’s ransom on team-building, including drafting in a raft of top foreign coaching talent, US officials say.

A Serb coaches the men’s football team and a Swede the women’s, while the synchronised swimming team is run by a Japanese coach who was branded a traitor at home when she came to China earlier this year.

South Koreans coach China’s men and women’s hockey teams while the men’s basketball team comes under a Lithuanian and an Australian runs the women’s team.

“They will spend more money on the preparation of athletes and they clearly should be favoured to win the most medals and the most gold medals,” US Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth has said.

Steven Roush, the committee’s chief of sports performance who was in China last week, said it was clear the Chinese were ahead.

In 2006, he said they won 43 gold medals to 36 for the US and 35 for Russia in top-level international events. “We take that as a challenge.”

So much so that China’s emergence has forced the US to respond with a critical re-examination of how it prepares its own athletes for the Olympics, he said.

“I think that is a critical aspect of being competitive and having competitors challenge you and forcing you to get better,” he added.

“It's not only about China,” said US Olympic Committee chairman Jim Scherr earlier this year. “Russia has done really well and other countries have improved their overall programmes, Japan and Australia and several European countries.”—AFP