It’s been clear to me since Day 1 that China would prefer the U.S. Olympic team fail as often as possible. The Chinese saw the Americans as the only team capable of keeping them from winning the gold-medal count, and every American failure was good news to them.

It was just sort of in the air. You could feel it in the arenas. You could see it by reading between the lines in the China Post.

But the first time I really seriously noticed it was today at the men’s volleyball gold-medal match. U.S. vs. Brazil.

Boy, did Brazil suddenly have a lot of Chinese fans, at Capital Gymnasium.

The Americans were booed steadily, particularly when one of them was about to serve.Brazil points were applauded wildly; American points were met with groans.

When U.S. fans scattered throughout the 12,000-person venue attempted an occasional chant of “U-S-A. U-S-A” they were sometimes booed and shouted down.

The Americans won, anyway. Take that, hosts.

They won the gold count, of course. I believe it was 51-38. But the U.S. won more medals, 110-100. Not that you will find that advertised in any Chinese media.

China TV and newspapers rank countries only by gold. They list silver and bronze, but they don’t bother to add them up – as every other media does everywhere. You have to do your own addition across gold-silver-bronze to realize that the China didn’t win the whole shootin’ match.