With three more Olympic medals won on Tuesday, the U.S. team ran its total medal count at the Torino Games to 18 and, more importantly, extended its commanding medal lead over the hated Soviet squad to 18-0.

            “I’m proud of our Olympic Team and everything they mean to America,” President Bush said this morning in a White House briefing. “We have had a long athletic rivalry with the Soviet Union, and this Olympic Games proves once again that our society is superior to theirs in every way.”

            While some see the U.S. team’s performance in Torino so far as a disappointment, team officials point to the huge strides Americans have made in winter sports against the USSR over the last two decades as an extremely positive sign.

            “If you look back at the 1980 Olympics, it was a huge story that we even managed to beat the Soviet team in hockey,” said Peter Ueberroth, chair of the USOC Board of Directors. “Now this year our team makes it into the quarterfinals, while the Soviets are nowhere to be found and it doesn’t even register a blip on the national consciousness. That proves how far we’ve come.”

            Most Olympic experts point to the 1992 Games as the year the U.S. really started to pull away from the Soviets.

            “Up until 1988 the USSR team placed first in the medal count of almost every Olympics,” said Christine Brennan of ‘USA Today.’ “But by 1992 they felt pressure from the Americans, panicked and re-branded themselves as the Unified Team. And by 1996 and ’98 the inevitable happened – our superior system passed them by and we started dominating them on the medal stand.”

            And while sports are only a minor part of life, many within the U.S. say they hold disproportionate importance internationally.

            “Athletic competition is a very tangible way people around the world can see the United States go head-to-head with the Soviet Union,” said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “In their own way, the American athletes competing in Torino have proven to the world yet again that democracy and capitalism is far superior to Communism. I completely expect our team to dominate the Soviets in future Olympics, as well as the Al-Qaeda team.”