Four technical teams, four sport partnership teams and a Paralympic team have been condensed to six groups, four months after Mike English replaced Steve Roush as chief of sport performance on an interim basis.

 

Team leaders are Alan Ashley in the winter group; Wes Barnett in team sports; Chris Vadala in endurance; Kelly Skinner in strength and power; Rachel Isaacs in combat and acrobatics; and Julie O'Neill in Paralympics.

 

Within each team are support staff members, including managers, high performance directors, physiologists, psychologists and sport dieticians, who serve as liaisons between national governing bodies and the USOC.

 

English said: "Sustained competitive excellence is still our goal.

 

"What we do hasn't changed dramatically, but how we do it is what we're trying to address.

 

"We're not trying to fix something that was broke.

 

"We're trying to continue to improve."

 

Under the previous structure, eight winter sports - biathlon, bobsled and skeleton, curling, figure skating, hockey, luge, skiing and snowboarding, and speedskating - were intermingled with summer sports.

 

Now, they fall under the same umbrella.

 

English said: "It seemed to make a lot of sense to put that all in one area.

 

"The winter groupings might have thought they might have got lost in the shuffle.

 

"This way, they know they're a focus item."

 

For the summer sports and Paralympic disciplines, English said the reorganisation "streamlined our communication model.