By Gil LeBreton
glebreton@star-telegram.com
Gymnastics, as most Americans know it, leaped into our living rooms in the summer of 1976.
A Romanian princess, barely tall enough to see over the balance beam, showed us what Olympic perfection can be.
Nadia Comaneci was 14 years old.
At those same Montreal Games, Nancy Lieberman was a member of the U.S. women's basketball team. Lieberman had just turned 18.
Shirley Babashoff, expected to lead America's female swimmers to the medals stand, was the team's veteran -- at the wise old age of 19.
Teenagers can still readily be found on the U.S. rosters at the London Olympic Games. But in almost every sport, the old Olympic motto of Citius, Altius, Fortius -- Swifter, Higher, Stronger -- is being amended to include Antiquus.
Older.
The average age of a U.S. competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics was 24. Thirty-two years later in Beijing, that average had risen to 26.8.
The list included 21 athletes who were 40 years old or more. Three of them were competing in their fifth Olympic Games. Twelve were in their fourth Olympics.
Twelve U.S. Olympians in 2008 were mothers. One, sailor John Dane III, was a grandfather.
At the U.S. swimming trials, Dara Torres hoped to make the team and compete in her sixth Olympic Games at age 45. Mother-of-two Janet Evans, who was already an Olympic veteran and swim legend-to-be in 1996 when she helped light the cauldron in Atlanta, trained for a London comeback at 40.
Both failed to make the U.S. team this time, but their stories were inspiring.
Natalie Coughlin made the Olympic swim roster at age 29. London Olympians Kara Lynn Joyce and Amanda Weir are both 26.
The U.S. men's swim team for London includes Jason Lezak, 36; Anthony Ervin, 31; and Brendan Hansen, who is 30. In all, 12 of the 25 swimmers on the men's team are 25 or more years old.
Once upon a time, the Olympic calendar hovered over amateur athletes like a birth curse. The Olympics came only once every four years, and an athlete was either at prime Olympic age, or he or she wasn't.
The shackles of Olympic amateurism and idealism had much to do with that. Every four years someone recounts the saga of Jim Thorpe, who was stripped of his 1912 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon gold medals because he had played semi-professional baseball. Amateurism was an underlying theme in the Academy Award-winning movie
Chariots of Fire, whose co-protagonist, Harold Abrahams, employed a professional coach.
But in the 1980s, behind the push of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the International Olympic Committee began to relax its rules on athletes being paid. By 1991 the Olympic Charter had rewritten Rule 26, defining strict amateurism, and left it up to individual sports' federations to determine who can compete in the Games.
In 2000, the U.S. Olympic Committee began paying qualifying athletes for their living and training expenses. World-class competitors can be eligible for group medical insurance. Olympic medal winners can receive performance bonuses.
Olympians can now be paid for public speaking appearances and for endorsing products. Swimmer Michael Phelps, who will try this month to add to his 14 Olympic gold medals, has lucrative sponsorship deals with, among others, Hilton, Subway and Omega. Torres has endorsement agreements with McDonald's, HP and Bengay.
Gold medal gymnast Nastia Liukin of Parker, whose bid for an Olympic comeback at the relatively ancient age (for women's gymnastics) of 22 fell short, has sponsorship deals with Visa, AT&T and Longines.
High hurdler Lolo Jones, 29, has endorsement contracts with Asics, Oakley, British Petroleum and Red Bull, though she has yet to win an Olympic medal. Jones was a solid favorite to win the gold medal in Beijing, but she crashed into the next-to-last hurdle in the 110-meter final and finished without a medal.
Yet Jones, like dozens of others, was able to extend her Olympic career, where generations of Olympians before her could not.
The 127-member U.S. track and field team in London will include 28 athletes who have won individual gold medals at either an Olympic Games or world championships. Four reigning Olympic gold medalists made the U.S. team as did eight current world champions.
Citius. Altius. Fortius. Antiquus.
Olympians are not only older these days, but they're also more familiar. The sponsorship deals have made familiar faces of the likes of soccer's Hope Solo and Abby Wambach and beach volleyballers Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh.
Familiar faces have meant more media interest, which, in turn, has led to increased television rights fees for the IOC. Samaranch's dream of monetizing the Olympics has more than come true.
Drive-by Olympic purists, self-anointed, decry the presence of older, card-carrying professionals on the Games' basketball and tennis rosters. But it's a win-win exercise for both the Olympic organizers (plus their TV rights-holders) and the athletes' sponsors.
The list of U.S. Olympic retreads in London is a long one, beginning with 27-year-old Phelps in swimming and continuing through flyweight Rau'shee Warren, also 25, who will be boxing in his third Olympic Games.
May-Treanor and Walsh, 34 and 33 respectively, will be back to try for their third consecutive gold medal in beach volleyball.
The list of veteran U.S. Olympians will also include long-distance runner Bernard Lagat, 37; the taekwondo family of Steven and Diana Lopez, 33 and 28 respectively; diver Troy Dumais, 32; shooting's Kim Rhode, 32, and triathlete Hunter Kemper, who is 36.
Cycling's Sarah Hammer, embroiled in controversy for her surgical mask incident in Beijing, will be an Olympic veteran at age 28 in London. And volleyballer Logan Tom will be a three-time Olympian at age 31.
Age has also been kind to former TCU athletes. Former Frog Khadevis Robinson made the track roster in the men's 800 meters and will be 36 by the Games. Ex-Frog Darvis "Doc" Patton is on the sprint relay roster at age 34.
The best of the track and field comeback stories, though, may belong to high jumper Amy Acuff of Corpus Christi, who made her fifth U.S. Olympic team at age 37. Acuff won the Texas state high school meet in 1990 and has competed in every summer Olympics since Atlanta in 1996.
Gone are the days, it seems, when the Olympic calendar smiled upon athletes just once.
Swifter. Higher. Stronger. Older.
If you see familiar faces on TV this summer from London, it's not a coincidence.
Gil LeBreton, 817-390-7697Twitter: @gilebreton
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