The Olympic boxing competition, which began on Saturday, offers clues regarding the future of the sport in America. Three U.S. fighters have scored first-round victories to date, but the overall outlook is bleak for America’s warriors. The expert consensus is that only four American boxers are realistic medal contenders. They are:

* Rock Allen, Welterweight from Philadelphia. Allen is a three-time national amateur champion whose father helps train world middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins.

* Andre Dirrell, Middleweight from Flint. A two-time national amateur champion, Dirrell cruised through the Olympic trials and has already won his first-round Olympic match.

* Andre Ward, Light-Heavyweight from Oakland. Another two-time national amateur champion, Ward has lost only one fight in five years, and that loss resulted from a hairline fracture of his thumb.

* Jason Estrada, Super-Heavyweight from Providence. The winner of three national amateur super-heavyweight championships. Last year, Estrada became the first non-Cuban super-heavyweight ever to win a gold medal at the Pan Am Games. Ward is the only one of the four regarded as a serious gold-medal threat, although Estrada could be helped by a set of unusually favorable tournament pairings drawn by lot.

Upsets can happen, but the overall prognosis is not encouraging for Team USA. And the implications of the situation extend beyond the amateur ranks into the pros.

The first Olympic gold medalist to win a professional world championship was American Fidel La Barba, who prevailed at 112 pounds in the 1924 Paris Games. Three years later, he captured the world flyweight championship.

Still, it would be a long time before the Olympics became a conventional path to professional stardom. Indeed, of all the Olympic gold medalists through 1972,only 11 – most notably, Floyd Patterson, Cassius Clay (who would become Muhammad Ali), Joe Frazier, and George Foreman – became champions as pros.

In 1976, things changed. A group of young Americans led by Ray Leonard, Howard Davis, Leon and Michael Spinks, and Leo Randolph won five gold medals at the Montreal Olympics. More importantly, they captured the imagination of the American public, and each gold-medal winner except Davis went on to win a professional championship as well.

The 1980 Moscow Olympics were marked by an American boycott because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But in 1984, Pernell Whitaker, Mark Breland, Meldrick Taylor, Jerry Page, Frank Tate, Henry Tillman, Paul Gonzales, Steve McCrory, and Tyrell Biggs won gold medals in Los Angeles. Also, Virgil Hill won a silver medal and Evander Holyfield took home a bronze. Several won world titles as pros, and it became accepted logic that an Olympic gold was the ideal launching pad for a boxing career.

In recent years, however, pickings have been slim. Oscar De La Hoya was the only American boxer to win a gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Games. David Reid scored in Atlanta in 1996. In Sydney in 2000, there were none.

Why the drought?

There was a time when boxing and baseball were America’s two national sports. But boxing is no longer part of the nation’s social fabric. There’s more glory in being a star football or basketball player, even at the college level, than there is for most professional fighters. And it doesn’t help that, television is a great motivating factor. Seeing something on television makes kids want to get into it. But there’s almost no boxing on “free TV” anymore. It’s all on cable and pay-per-view.

In sum, boxing simply isn’t that popular anymore. And you can’t attract large numbers of athletes to a sport that isn’t popular; particularly when the competition involves getting punched in the nose.

Thus, the problem with America’s Olympic boxing team begins with a dwindling supply of talent. Next, there’s an ever-diminishing opportunity to learn. Great fighters start young. In the U.S., when a child is athletically gifted, he or she can develop by participating on a school team. But very few Americans have access to a gym where they can learn to box.

Moreover, as noted by trainer and television commentator Teddy Atlas, “Quality trainers are rare; and when you don’t have good teachers, you don’t learn.”

And last, it’s not just that boxing in the United States is in a period of decline. The rest of the world is getting better.