The United States appears to have qualified only two male cross-country mountain-bike racers to compete at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

This news comes after the UCI released its latest nations’ rankings on October 18 — the U.S. men sit in seventh place with 2019 UCI points, two points behind Sweden.

The combined nation ranking for ’06 and ’07 determines the number of berths each country receives for the games. The U.S. men finished 2006 ranked fourth with 2205 points. Should the current 2007 rankings hold through December 31, the U.S.’s combined ranking for both years will be sixth, 129 points behind fifth-placed Germany, which has 4353 points. But only the top five nations earn the maximum three Olympic berths, meaning for the second Olympics in a row, only two American men will attend.

“We knew all year we were on the bubble so it wasn’t a big surprise,” said Matt Cramer, USA Cycling’s mountain-bike coordinator.

The combined point total of a country’s top-three ranked riders determines its UCI nation ranking. At the end of 2006, three Americans sat inside the top 25 of the UCI rider rankings: Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (11th), Adam Craig (17th) and Jeremiah Bishop (22nd).

But U.S. riders posted less impressive UCI standings in 2007, with Craig in 16th, Horgan-Kobelski in 28th and Todd Wells in 32nd.

“Adam and I had better World Cup results last year, and that’s the difference right there,” Horgan-Kobelski said. “We were ahead of the guys from Belgium and Germany last year and those guys had stellar races in the last half of this year.”

Indeed, Horgan-Kobelski’s top World Cup performance this year was 23rd place at the June 23 round at Mont-Ste-Anne — a far cry from his fifth-place finish at the 2006 World Cup in Fort William, Scotland. Craig, who twice cracked the top-10 at World Cups in 2006, managed one 10th place finish this year, at the July 7 round in St. Felicién. And Bishop, whose 8th place finish at the 2006 world championships was the first American top-10 in a decade, missed two World Cup rounds due to illness.

The U.S. sat in sixth place after the St. Felicién World Cup, but the slide escalated at the 2007 UCI world mountain-bike championships, where three Germans, two Belgians and one Swedish rider finished ahead of Craig, the U.S.’s top finisher in 22nd place. All three nations slipped past the U.S. in the rankings.

Sweden finished the 2006 season ranked a distant 11th, so it’s final 2007 rankings will not earn it three Olympic spots. But both Germany and Belgium moved up and bumped the U.S. out of contention.

“If you look at each of our performances, we had high points and really low points,” Bishop said, “and unfortunately our low points happened at the important races.”

But American men did skip a handful important UCI races down the home stretch of the 2007 season, a move that did not help their cause. While the U.S. had two slots for the 2007 Pan American Games on July 14 in Brazil, only Craig attended. The American won the UCI Category 2 race, while Wells and Horgan-Kobelski took a pass to prepare for the national championships.

No Americans attended the UCI Category 1 Swisspower Cup Finals on September 2, a race attended by Europe’s top riders only a week before the world championships in Scotland. Americans also skipped France’s October 14 Roc d’Azur cross-country race, which carries UCI hors categorie status.

“I think we all could have kept a better eye on the situation — we weren’t keeping enough tabs on what was going on,” said Craig. “It wasn’t until after world’s that it became apparent. After World Cup finals it was like ‘Oh Crap.’”

Cramer said he kept an open dialogue with the American riders throughout the season, and at the September 22 Olympic test event riders discussed chasing points through the end of the season. But USA Cycling lacks the funds to send the riders themselves, and American teams traditionally do not send riders to the Roc d’Azur.

Three UCI races currently remain on the 2007 calendar — the November 3, 17 and December 2 rounds of the Copa Clausura series in Chile. Last week Cramer, Craig, Horgan-Kobelski and Wells discussed traveling to Chile to chase the points, however the plan was eventually scrapped.

“It would only be a worthwhile effort if all three [Wells, Horgan-Kobelski and Craig] went down and made it a group effort,” Cramer said, “but it seemed like among the three of them there was some hesitation.”

Cramer said in order to get themselves back into contention for earning a third spot, the Americans would need to place 1-2-3 in each Chilean event. And with no funding available from USA Cycling, the riders would have to ask their trade teams or pay out of their own pockets for the trip.

“While it’s mathematically possible, I don’t think it’s realistic,” Horgan-Kobelski said. “My fitness isn’t where it would be in the middle of the season, and it’s definitely not free points down there. Those guys [in Chile] are in the middle of their seasons.”

Craig said he was ready to book flights to South America, however he was not interested in chasing points if he were the only American to go.

“I priced it out, it was about $1200 bucks to do Roc d’Azur and $1500 to Chile out of my own pocket,” Craig said. “If we’re spending a couple thousand bucks for an Olympic spot, I think that’s a worthwhile investment, but I’m not prepared to do it alone.”

Cramer said the loss of one spot would not change USA Cycling’s Olympic selection procedure for 2008. USA Cycling will set a Long Team in January of potential Olympic riders. Any team rider to score a top-three finish at a European World Cup or the 2008 world championships will automatically qualify for the team. If no one meets the criteria, USA Cycling and the United States Olympic Committee will pick the two men based of results at those races.

In 2004, the United States fielded a team of two men and one woman after USA Cycling failed to notify athletes of the impending points chase until the year of the Olympics. While the U.S. men will again earn two spots for 2008, riders agree that the sport’s national governing body succeeded in bettering its communication.

“Four years ago no one even knew the country ranking criteria until it was already over and we finished 12th,” said Horgan-Kobelski, who earned one of the coveted spots. “This time it was on the radar for years, and we put up a good battle and finished sixth. I think it shows that we are legitimately up there with the best cycling nations in the world.”