Belote, who now coaches children and teens in swim, told The Associated Press on Thursday that when she found out her medals were taken, she “wept like a baby.”

“I’m just sick about the whole thing,” she said. “My medals are the culmination of a journey I started as a young girl with a dream to just get in the water and swim.”

The medals also represent the sacrifices of everyone who helped her get to the Olympics, Belote said.

“It’s not just, ‘Hey, I swam fast and got a gold medal,’” she said. “Even though they’re materialistic possessions, there are so few gold medals in the world, and it’s something I could give my children that they could give their children. It’s something very special that few people in the world can pass on, and now it’s gone.”

The medals are engraved with Belote’s name, have Munich and two Xs on them to represent the 20th Olympiad. Belote, who grew up in Springfield, Va., was an All-America swimmer at Arizona State University and was named the nation’s top college swimmer in 1977.

Belote said she’s considering offering a reward for the safe return of her medals.

“I don’t care if they take them to a library, to a school, to a fire station,” she said. “I just hope to get them back.”

“For sure” is nothing new, of course. It’s been around since the 1580s, arriving after the expression “sure enough” and before “sure-footed,” which, sadly, never really caught on. Today it is associated with groovy Californian optimism (“Fer shurr, dude!”), and tends to pepper the speech of Gen Y’ers, the demographic most represented at the Vancouver Games. But the frequency with which Olympic competitors, coaches and officials have been saying “for sure” lately suggests it is more than a meaningless verbal tic.

“The use of ‘for sure’ is very interesting,” George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a phone interview. “‘For sure’ is an idiom, not a literal phrase. It doesn’t automatically mean ‘surely.’ It’s usually an attempt to modify the rest of a sentence, and tends to rise in conditions of uncertainty, particularly in relation to future situations where the outcome is unknown.”

Hence the popularity of “for sure” at the Winter Games, where much is unknown and yet certainty demanded. The odd juxtaposition can create a confusing contradiction, in which a speaker is for sure about something they think. “I thought I was in control for sure,” said Mike Robertson, a member of Canada’s snowboard team, after ceding the gold medal to American Seth Wescott. “I think for sure he will get at least one medal,” said Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjorndalen about his rival, American biathlete Tim Burke. “I think [the course] was acceptable, for sure,” said women’s race director Atle Skaardal, in what looks like a last-second attempt to mask her displeasure with the slushy, weather-beaten course.

The Olympics are obviously a stressful and demanding affair. For two weeks every four years, otherwise obscure athletes become both our national ambassadors and the avatars through which we experience strange sporting events like skeleton or short-track speed skating. There’s a tacit obligation to be positive and “for sure” about things — to make one’s country proud, but also to reduce one’s own fear and anxiety. Faced with the ambiguity of the Winter Games, though, appearing confident is not so simple — even, and perhaps especially, for athletes’ elected spokesmen.

Take Thomas Vonn, the voluble coach and husband of Lindsey Vonn. “It is entirely possible that she could race in all five events and be fine,” he said on Feb. 10, three days before the Games. “It is possible, for sure.” Two days later, with postponements to the downhill and super-combined affording Lindsey’s shin time to heal, he said, “This helps us, that’s for sure.” But by Feb. 17, the postponements had become rampant and disorienting: “It’s getting ridiculous, for sure.” And finally, on Feb 18, after Vonn failed to finish the super-combined: “Nothing is for sure, one way or another … anything can change in 10 minutes.”

The context of these statements is important. Vonn, with privileged access to the state of his wife’s health, was being pressured by reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press to make predictions about her ability to race. So Vonn, in a valiant effort, expressed his certainty that it was possible, before finally breaking down and conceding that it was anyone’s guess.

Other athletes and their coaches, under less intense media scrutiny, have employed “for sure” to stress the obvious, in order to sidestep more speculative predictions. “If there’s snow we’ll ski for sure,” as U.S. mogul skier Patrick Deneen said. “Injuries [don't] make you faster, for sure,” said German women’s ski team coach Matthias Berthold, on racer Maria Riesch’s debilitating injuries. “She’s going to be sore, that’s for sure,” said U.S. women’s ski coach Jim Tracy, after racer Tracy Cook crashed into the safety netting in the downhill at 70 mph.

But occasionally athletes get trapped in uncomfortable situations, whereupon “for sure” becomes a handy verbal dodge. For example, when Norwegian Alpine skier Aksel Lund Svindal was asked to speculate on the unpredictability of Bode Miller (that is, before he surprised everyone by staying out of the bars and winning three medals), he replied: “[Bode is] amazingly gifted and I’m sure we’ll see some great runs from him … But at the same time, I’m not sure we’ll know what to expect from him week to week … But for sure, he’ll be someone that people will watch because you never know with him.”

Considering the harried navigation such questions require, you can almost hear the relief that comes over athletes when asked not for predictions but for how they feel about something. (At last, a no-brainer!) For example:

How did Lindsey Vonn feel about an Austrian newspaper calling her “heavy”? “As a woman, I want to drop the subject, but I used it as motivation, that’s for sure.”

How does Mellisa Hollingsworth, the 39-year-old Canadian skeleton racer, feel after years of slamming her head on the ice? “My memory isn’t quite as good as it used to be, for sure.”

How did U.S. mogul skier Hannah Kearney feel about learning backflips? “I don’t know if it’s a phobia exactly, but it’s something I was uninterested in, that’s for sure.”

How does Mark Grimmette, the American luge veteran, feel about the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili? “It’s something I’ll never forget, that’s for sure.”

On this subject, athletes could learn a few lessons from politicians, experts at projecting certainty under the foggiest of circumstances. “I don’t claim to know all the technical details,” Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, said in the wake of Kumaritashvili’s crash. “But one thing I know for sure, that no sports mistake is supposed to lead to a death.” In this crafty usage, Mr. Saakashvili succeeds in casting blame on Olympic officials, causing us to overlook the fact that, although such mistakes aren’t supposed to be fatal, this is the inherent risk that all athletes run in today’s Winter Games. After all, if we allowed Olympians to contemplate the great unknowns for too long, we’d have a lot less Winter Games, that’s for sure. 

Taking in the scene from the middle of a packed crowd, Woody Miller was waiting for a display just like that, to inform the father that, yes, his son was indeed enjoying this moment.

Then again, what’s not to enjoy?

Bode Miller now has three medals at these Winter Games and five for his career. The five Alpine medals tie him for the second-most by any man in Olympic history, behind the eight won by Kjetil Andre Aamodt of Norway.

And while Miller has long insisted that medals matter little to him, his father held a little different view of the situation. He thought his son was “hungry” for that elusive gold, almost burdened by it.

“There was something that was definitely on his shoulders,” said Woody Miller, who’s from Franconia, N.H. “I think it’s more like he’s enjoying himself. That’s always been key for him. He lost that.”

Consider it found again.

Woody Miller couldn’t find the words to describe his son’s final slalom run, saying only that he was really “ripping there” in the slalom. He knew his son nailed it by his expression crossing the finish line.

“He was pleased with his run,” Woody Miller said. “I could see that on his face.”

That sure wasn’t the case four years ago at the Turin Games. Touted as the star of those games, Bode Miller left empty-handed, drawing more attention for his social life than his skiing.

“I’m sure he was trying as hard as he could in every event, but he wasn’t experiencing the joy of racing,” Woody Miller said. “He is now.”

Hard not to.

There have been no expectations at this Olympics, and maybe that’s helped, his dad suggested.

“That’s something he has in common with me. I like to feel like I’m a dark horse,” said Woody Miller, who was at the medals ceremony Sunday night, snapping photos. “He likes to be a surprise.”

Besides gold, the 32-year-old Bode Miller also has won bronze in the downhill and silver in the super-G.

More important to him, though, is the way he’s skiing, not so much his place on the podium.

“I would’ve been proud of that skiing with a medal or not,” Miller said. “The three medals are kind of a distraction more than anything else, because it makes everyone think I’m proud of the races because I got the medals.”

His dad knows that’s not the case.

“Because he’s skiing the way he wants to ski and getting some results at the same time — that means a lot,” Woody Miller said. “When he’s on the race course, he’s in control. But that’s a tiny fraction of his life.”