Remember when Sarah Hammer of Temecula and three other U.S. track cyclists got off the plane in Beijing last month wearing protective masks?

And do you remember how they were trashed by their own Olympic Committee? Which released an abject “apology” under their names?

Now the USOC is going to apologize to the cyclists, conceding “some aspects of the situation could have been handled differently and better.”

The mask incident was probably the low point of the Beijing Olympics for the U.S. Olympic Committee, as it pathetically sucked up to its Chinese hosts and strong-armed its own athletes into the sort of craven begging one would expect out of a Chinese show trial.

It ticked me off, and I wrote this critique of the USOC for turning against its athletes.

Well, the cyclists were ticked off, too, and they came home and lawyer-ed up, and now the USOC is doing the backtracking, as these two stories note.

Here is the first part of the story, where, the riders say they were harassed and intimidated by USOC officials and threatened with expulsion from the Olympics if no apology was forthcoming. Lot of new bits here about behind-the-scenes strong-arming.

Here is Part 2 of the story, in which the USOC promises an apology is forthcoming. (Note: That is Sarah Hammer in the foreground of the main photo.)

To see the full text of the original apology, click here. Warning: It isn’t pretty. It shows USOC honchos Jim Scherr and Peter Ueberroth in a particularly unflattering light.

I’m glad we have a reversal here. This was wrong, wrong, wrong, and the pressure the USOC applied to these four cyclists certainly couldn’t have helped in their performances barely a week later. None medaled, including Hammer, who had been a favorite in women’s individual pursuit.

When I get the text of the USOC’s mea culpa, I will post it here.