Now more than ever, Olympic teams go multinational

This phenomenon is not confined to the Arabian Peninsula, however. The 596-member US Olympic team in Beijing includes nearly three dozen foreign-born athletes, including British rower Jen Goldsack and long-distance runner Bernard Lagat, who won Olympic medals for Kenya in both Athens and Sydney.

US Olympic Committee spokeswoman Lindsay DeWall says the team is a great example of America’s unique diversity. “The United States is a country that was founded by immigrants looking for a better future and it continues to welcome people from around the world,” writes Ms. DeWall in an e-mail from Beijing. “It is a country that is constantly improved by the talent, diversity, and attributes of its citizens – including those who are foreign born.”

That’s reflected at the collegiate level as well. Many up-and-coming swimmers, track stars, tennis players, and skiers come to the US to get an education – and take advantage of world-class facilities, coaching, and training opportunities. The trend is controversial: Foreign recruits raise the level of competition for US collegiate athletes, but they also fill scholarship slots that otherwise would go to American athletes – a practice which, some argue, undermines US Olympic chances. In 2004, for example, three of the four swimmers that won South Africa’s first-ever relay gold – besting the favored US team – had competed for the University of Arizona, and the fourth was headed into his freshman year there.

If US athletes are disgruntled, perhaps they could take a page out of the Chinese table tennis players’ book. Crowded out by talent in their own country, many Chinese have emigrated to other countries – including the US, where five of the eight players at this year’s Olympic trials were born in China. US basketball star Becky Hammon reverse-engineered that tactic, joining Russia’s 2008 Olympic team when she failed to make the US squad for Beijing.

But for countries, it’s harder. They often watch helplessly as other countries take off with athletes they’ve invested a lot of time and money in, says Abby Hoffman, a council member of the International Association of Athletics Federations, which has approved nearly 300 changes in citizenship over the past decade and is tinkering with its rules to make them as fair as possible.

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