It Was The Games The Women Came To Leave Their Mark

Carla McGhee and the rest of her American basketball sisters stood outside their locker room Sunday night, celebrating their championship, lined up in a hallway at the Georgia Dome that had at least 100 television, radio and print journalists scurrying to record their reactions, their impressions, their plans, their feelings.

“I think what has happened here,” said McGhee, her gold medal draped around her neck, “is going to knock down a lot of walls for women - open a lot of paths - and it’s going to be good. Like my grandma always said, you’ve got to be in the right place, at the right time. And you know, I think this was it.”

No matter what the tally of gold, silver and bronze, make no mistake, the Centennial Olympic Games were a platinum triumph for 3,779 female athletes. Never before had Olympus welcomed so many women.

With more sports placed upon their doorstep, and more events added to existing disciplines, the women turned the Games into their biggest, finest and most-watched sports stage in history.

The number of women participants was up 40 percent from the Barcelona Games of ‘92, in large part because of the addition of soccer and softball as medal sports. Perhaps most important, wherever the women went, NBC followed with its magnifying camera lens. Had the Peacock Network shown some foresight, it could have used the O’Jays’ “I’m a Girl Watcher” as its official Olympics jingle.

The Games’ most repeated video clip was that of U.S. gymnast Kerri Strug sticking her landing on the vault and then crawling for cover with two torn ligaments in her left ankle.

Strug was carried to the podium in the arms of her coach, the renowned Bela Karoyli, and within hours she was fielding offers for endorsements and appearances that, reports say, should make her a millionaire by year’s end. No male athlete lit up the lens or rang up the cash drawer like Strug. Wheaties announced Sunday that Strug and her six sister gymnasts will be cereal-box cover girls. U.S. swimmer Amy Van Dyken also has a Wheaties box to call her own.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin, they’ve come a long way.

“I personally am against the participation of women in public competition,” de Coubertin, founder of the modern Games, once said, “which does not mean they should not participate in sports, yet not in public.”

Considered the founder of the Olympic movement, de Coubertin, a French educator, would be stoned for expressing similar thoughts today. A century later, his Games are a triumph in gender equity and political correctness.

The modern Olympics began in 1896 without a woman on the field at Athens. A quadrennium later, in Paris, 19 of the 1,225 participants were women and Chicago socialite Margaret Abbott was the first American woman to win a gold medal.

Abbott fired a 47 for nine holes of golf and was crowned champion. Later, she expressed what she felt was part of the reason for her success: “Because all the French girls apparently misunderstood the nature of the game scheduled for that day and turned up to play in high heels and tight skirts.”

One of the principal reasons for the success of American women this year must be the blossoming effect of Title IX, signed by President Nixon in 1972. The man who brought us Watergate also approved the watershed legislation.

When Title IX was implemented, one in 27 U.S. schoolgirls played sports, according to a report by the Atlanta Journal. Today, nationally, one in three have found themselves a game.

“Once they were forced to give us things comparable to men,” said basketball star Rebecca Lobo, “we showed we’re able to succeed. And it’s pretty wonderful to see.”

To watch the U.S. women dismantle Brazil in the basketball gold-medal game was to be handed a ticket back in time, to an era when the game emphasized ball control, shooting and tactical play. No slam dunks. No fights. No hogging the ball. In the end, true, it was a U.S. blowout, 111-87, but both sides triumphed in staging a game that was vastly more enjoyable than any executed by the U.S. Dream Team men’s squad.

“I think it’s more than a coincidence,” said Jennifer Azzi, also on the gold-medal basketball squad, “that before we came out (for the final game) we watched video of the U.S. women’s soccer team winning their gold medal, and of the U.S. women’s softball team winning their gold medal. And I think it’s a contagious thing.”

In the coming months in the U.S., there will be more opportunities than ever for women to play sports professionally, with pro leagues planned in basketball (two circuits are playing tug-of-war over the best players) and softball. Dot Richardson, the hero of the U.S. softball squad, says she won’t turn pro, opting to go back to the mundane world of being a doctor. She was making rounds at USC 24 hours after winning the gold, her leather glove swapped for a stethoscope.

The flame has gone out on Olympus. Long live the Gender Games.

“We were representing not just ourselves,” said Azzi, “but all USA women in general out there.”