I just found out that both US women's soccer and softball have had victories.  Big surprise.  I get the feeling that there are some Olympic sports deliberately set up so that certain countries can get easy wins - usually the United States.  Basketball (though maybe not this year), and women's softball and women's soccer come to mind.  While I will concede that soccer is the world's sport, the rest of the world seems so pathetically far behind in women's teams sports with the exception of progressive Skandinavia and "anything-to-get-a-gold-our-woman-athletles-look-like-the-east-german-ones-from-the-70s" China, that it's hard not to get the impression that it is a gimme to the US.  Are there any other gimme sports, to the US or to other countries?

I think womens sports should be encouraged, thought something doesn't feel right about doing it this way, like a corner that will come back to poke us in ass is being cut.