Does the US usually send a team?
FIDE has added more and more of these sorts of events, which has outstripped the ability of the USCF to subsidize the sending of teams/players to all of them. When the USCF does not financially support a team we have, in the past, agreed to name a team/players who may want to attend at their own expense as the US representative provided they otherwise qualify. Where we have had more than one group request to go the office has a procedure to select an “official” group (I would post that but I don’t have it handy.)
There were two USA teams at the U16 Olympiad in China last year.
I would think the US would be a gold medal contender. What would be the strongest US U16 team?
Xiong, Jeffery 14 TX USA 2598
Sevian, Samuel 13 MA USA 2581
Chandra, Akshat 15 NJ USA 2573
Harmon-Vellotti 15 ID USA 2520
Both of which asked to be the “official rep for the USCF” - the good news is that now we have a better plan to determine who that is. Neither team received any financial support to attend, as there was nothing budgeted for this event. FIDE has developed a plethora of such events over the last several years. That is fine, but our ability to organize USCF supported teams is limited.
Those are all strong players indeed.