With 958 medals, 17 days, 132 new Olympic records, 43 new world records and one wholesome pounding courtesy of the Chinese, the 2008 Summer Olympiad is over. It’s been an amazing and bumpy ride for Team USA, but once we look past Michael Phelps’ extraordinary performance in the swimming events, we begin to realize one thing: The United States better take 2012 in London seriously or we will witness the decline of American athletic prowess in the Olympics.

If the U.S. continues to shelter its best athletes for personal entertainment purposes, it will never have the strength to compete against the best athletes in the world. For example, baseball is considered America’s pastime and America’s game. But we took bronze because we refused to send our best baseball players such as Derek Jeter, David Wright, Josh Beckett and A-Rod. Because it would inconvenience the Major League Baseball season, we were forced to send a scruffy group of amateurs and prospects.

It was a miracle we even medaled in baseball. Imagine how much more interest Americans would have in Olympic baseball if we sent a dream team of MLB players like we do for basketball. It would also increase the marketability of baseball overseas, and it may have saved the sport from Olympic extinction.

Just look at all our “redeem team,” the nickname given to the U.S. Olympic basketball team, accomplished in Beijing. By actually sending some of our best NBA players, we were able to comfortably defeat the opposition and bring back the gold to the country that invented basketball.

For the U.S. to return to Olympic dominance, it needs to do more that just send our best athletes. We also need to begin developing Olympian athletes, instead of just marketable ones. Children in our society, especially males with athletic potential, are generally trained to be football and basketball players – wasting our potential by training most of our athletes in only two sports rather than preparing them for the diversity of the Olympics. Sorry, but two individuals participating in artistic gymnastic events have a more significant impact on their nation’s gold medal count than an entire basketball team because it only brings home one gold collectively. For the record, China won eight artistic gymnastic gold medals. The U.S. won a paltry two.

Try to envision what may happen if we had the best athletes within our nation train for the Olympics rather than the Super Bowl or World Series. Left tackle Walter Jones, a Seahawks player who stands at 6-foot-5 and weighs 325 pounds, could have trained for weightlifting rather than blocking and may have possibly given the U.S. its first weightlifting medal in 2008. Of course, he makes millions in the NFL and conventional wisdom says he would be crazy to pass that up. But imagine if Dwight Howard, starting center for the Orlando Magic and member of the U.S. “redeem team,” was trained as a boxer. Or if Jason Kidd’s vision was used for rifle shooting, where there are nine men’s gold medals to be won, instead of dropping dimes on the court. The lure of a huge paycheck prevents us from compelling our best athletes to compete in the Olympics.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, China’s population is around 1.3 billion. In contrast, the U.S. weighs in at 300 million, or 0.3 billion. We can no longer send our second-tier athletes and expect to leisurely take home the gold. Just ask our basketball team of 2004.

With China’s resurgence as a world power, we are helplessly out-resourced and out-classed. If the U.S. intends to dominate the only category which matters to the rest of the world, the gold medal count, it’s time to begin training our best athletes to be more than entertainers, but Olympians.