“Our main priority was to do well in the sports that had 2008 Olympic qualification ramifications and we have done extremely well in those sports,” said Steve Roush, the USOC’s Chief of Sport Performance. “The next priority was to give our national teams and emerging-elite athletes some great experience in a multi-sport Games competition which has been extremely helpful in our preparations for 2008.”

At the Pan American Games, the United States qualified athletes in six sports and earned 12 Olympic slots for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Shooting used the Pan Am Games to pick up three spots in its final opportunity to earn Olympic quota slots. Sandra Uptagrafft (Beverly Hills, Calif.) secured the women’s 25-Meter Pistol spot with her gold medal effort while Jason Turner (Rush, N.Y.) also grabbed an individual spot finishing on top in the men’s 50-Meter Pistol competition. Michael McPhail (Darlington, Wisc.) earned a spot for the U.S. in the men’s 50-Meter Prone Rifle with a silver medal. Tom Tamas (Pittsview, Ala.) won the gold medal in the event but had already secured his place at the Games at a World Cup earlier this year.

Andy Potts (Princeton, N.J.) and Julie Ertle (Placentia, Calif.) won team spots for the sport of Triathlon with gold medal performances in Rio de Janeiro for both the men and women in 2008.

Two athletes earned spots in Modern Pentathlon with gold medals at the Pan Ams. Eli Bremmer (Monument, Colo.) qualified by winning the men’s competition while Mickelle Kelly (Chatham, N.Y.) qualified by winning a bronze medal and finishing as one of the top two North Americans in the event.

The U.S. women’s water polo team clinched a berth for Beijing by wining the gold medal at the Pan Ams. Earlier in the year, the team had won a world championship but that performance didn’t result in a spot in the Olympic Games. The U.S. men’s water polo team also claimed a spot in the Olympic field with a win in Rio de Janeiro.

Synchronized swimming qualified both the duet and the eight-person team for Beijing at the Pan American Games. The duet will feature Christina Jones (Missoula, Mont.) and Andrea Nott (San Jose, Calif.)

Jun Gao (Gaithersburg, Md.) won the women’s singles title in table tennis and qualified for a spot in her home country of China. She represented China in the Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, in 1992 and will now compete for her new country, the United States 16 years later.