U.S. team on rehabilitation course in Beijing

BEIJING (Reuters) - The U.S. boxing team have several reasons to believe Beijing is the right place to revive their glorious Olympic past.

Light-heavyweight Andre Ward's gold medal in Athens four years ago was the only title won by the U.S. in the past two Games and is not considered good enough for a country who have won a record 48 Olympic titles and produced such great champions as Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and Sugar Ray Leonard.

The fact that Cuba, the superpower of the sport for decades, will field their least-experienced squad in years after a string of defections has raised the American boxers' hopes to restore their country's battered pride.

Head coach Dan Campbell also imposed on his young team a year-long program that required them to live and train at USA Boxing headquarters in Colorado Springs.

The idea was to match the kind of instruction Cuba and Russia have been giving their fighters for years.

Not everybody liked it and light-flyweight Luis Yanez was dropped from the squad for going missing before being reinstated on appeal.

Flyweight Rau'shee Warren dismissed, however, suggestions discipline had been a problem.

"All I know is that this 2008 team, we push each other," Warren told Reuters. "We all want that hardware, all we think about is gold medals. That's what we dream about. The way I see it, we should bring a pile home.

Warren, the only survivor of the 2004 team and the first American boxer to compete at back-to-back Olympics in over 30 years, is one of the team's strongest medal prospects together with fellow world champion Demetrius Andrade, a welterweight.

CONFIDENT HOLYFIELD

"I expect them to win at least three gold medals at these Games," former world heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield boldly stated when asked about the team's prospects.

"They are better now. They are coming here as world champions. These guys are motivated and they will do really well," Holyfield, an Olympic bronze medalist at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, told reporters shortly after arriving in Beijing.

One of the U.S. team's problems is their best boxers are impatient to turn professional. Another is a struggle by their boxers to come to terms with the scoring system introduced after the judging scandal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Their minds already set on professional boxing, the Americans find it hard to adopt a strategy suited to the electronic system, under which only clear punches count.

"One of the reasons I took them to Colorado Springs is because last time we had a great team, some of the best boxers in the world, but every time they went home they boxed ...in a style that had nothing to do with the Olympics," said Campbell.

The coach can only hope his boxers will have learned the lesson at last and will be clever rather than flashy inside the Beijing ring.

(Editing by Greg Stutchbury)