As the Paris Olympics approach, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and others cheer on the women’s sports event
Margaret Abbott, the first American woman to win an Olympic event, dies at age 76 without knowing of her groundbreaking achievement.
The 1900 Games in Paris were the first in which women were allowed to compete, but they were so young and unorganized that Abbott spent the rest of her life thinking she had won a local golf tournament. It didn’t help that her prize was a gilded china bowl, not a gold medal.
Paula Welch, now professor emeritus at the University of Florida, discovered Abbott’s milestone decades laterIt was a revelation that surprised even Abbott’s son, Philip Dunne.
“It’s not every day you find out your mother was an Olympic champion, 80 years later,” Dunne said wrote in a 1984 Golf Digest article.
There will be no mistaking such epic moments for female competitors at the Paris 2024 Games. If Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, triumphs again, if charismatic sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson separates herself from the pack, if world record holder Katie Ledecky adds to her collection of seven gold medals in swimming, they will once again be international media sensations by sunrise.
The transformation underscores how much women have changed the Olympic Games since the early competition of 1900, when only 22 of the 997 athletes were women. The Winter and Summer Games of old have become platforms where women are as well known as men. The 2024 Paris Games will be the first to feature equal numbers of female and male athletes.
In the 1980s and 1990s, few female athletes in the United States were as famous as Jackie Joyner-Kersee. The stylish, attractive star of USA Track & Field set numerous world records and won six Olympic medals, including three gold.
She understands the power of this moment in the history of women’s sports, and in true Olympic style, she is ready to pass the torch.
“What I love is the respect I see from this generation,” Joyner-Kersee, 62, said The Athletics. “But you also want them to have their moments. I think that’s really important. My era was my era. I did what I did, but what can I pass on to you that can help you?
“With the Olympics just around the corner, with what Sha’Carri Richardson has done in becoming world champion, and Sydney (McLaughlin-Levrone) running under 51 seconds in the 400m hurdles, the excitement around women’s athletics is growing.”
Biles, who has 37 Olympic and World Championship gymnastics medals, headlines an impressive group of American women’s athletes headed to Paris. Richardson, Ledecky and gymnast Suni Lee are also in attendance, as are the U.S. women’s basketball, water polo and soccer teams.
Joyner-Kersee knows better than anyone how life-changing Olympic fame can be.
“Every time I stood on stage,” she said, “I always thought about my community in East St. Louis (Illinois), and also the coaches who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.”
Jackie Joyner-Kersee dominated the Olympic heptathlon event in the 1980s and 1990s. (H. Darr Beiser / Imagn Content Services, LLC via USA Today)
Her gratitude extends to an even earlier Olympic sensation. Wilma Rudolph was the star of the 1960 Summer Games in Rome, where she won the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field (100 meters, 200 meters and the 400 meters relay) at one Olympic Games. She became a household name in Italy, along with other American male Olympic standouts such as boxer Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay), basketball star Oscar Robertson and decathlete Rafer Johnson.
Rudolph made numerous television appearances and received numerous awards, including the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year Award in 1960 and 1961. She retired from competitive sports in 1962 and took up teaching, coaching, and running a community center, among other endeavors. Her most notable track and field achievements at the Olympics, however, remain her achievements.
Her fame put her in a position to offer Joyner-Kersee advice years later. That conversation came after the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, after Joyner-Kersee left with a silver medal in the heptathlon and a hint of disappointment. She narrowly missed out on the gold she would later become synonymous with.
Rudolph, an announcer at the 1984 Games, took Joyner-Kersee under her wing, and the two became close in the years that followed. Joyner-Kersee said Rudolph’s advice about how to handle opportunities outside of track and field helped her grow into a leader on and off the track — even though she didn’t fully understand it at the time.
“I hear this (advice) and in my head I’m like, ‘What is she talking about?'” Joyner-Kersee said. “But now that you’re experiencing it? I realized she was someone who was preparing me for what she knows is going to happen.”
Nearly 30 years later, Joyner-Kersee has been able to fill that mentoring role for a rising Olympian. Since failing to qualify for the U.S. heptathlon team after a fall at the Olympic Trials for the 2020 Games, Anna Hall regularly received encouraging phone calls from Joyner-Kersee as she prepares for the 2024 Games. Hall recently qualified for the Paris Games and is seen as a favorite to win gold in Joyner-Kersee’s signature event.
Joyner-Kersee is one of the influential figures profiled in a recently published book by Bonnie-Jill Laflin about the trendsetters who paved the way for this turning point in women’s athletics.In a class of its own: celebrating female firsts in sport” features chapters based on interviews with tennis star Billie Jean King, basketball founder Nancy Lieberman, gymnast Mary Lou Retton, race car driver Danica Patrick, former Oakland Raiders CEO Amy Trask and others who broke down barriers for women in athletics. Several stars reflect on their inspirations and cite the impact of women like Rudolph and multi-sport athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
For Retton, who in 1984 first American gymnast in history to win an Olympic individual all-around goldher inspiration was Nadia Comăneci. Retton praised the 1976 gold medalist, the first to achieve a perfect 10.0 in Olympic history.
“Of course it was Nadia,” Retton said in the book. “Then it clicked. I was glued to the TV watching this little girl named Nadia from another country, Romania. She was doing such amazing things with her body and I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s what I want to do and there’s a name for it — it’s called gymnastics.'”
Mary Lou Retton became the first American gymnast to win an individual all-around gold at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984. (Jerry Cooke/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
Laflin, a San Francisco native, wrote the book to ensure that future generations would understand that today’s magazine covers and great TV ratings were a long time coming. “I wish I had a book like this to understand that it’s not going to be easy,” she said. The Athletics. “There are going to be struggles and you are not going to be accepted. I think those are the things that women can see now and have a little bit of guidance to navigate through.”
With Joyner-Kersee’s unique blend of talents, there’s perhaps no one better positioned to appreciate the current surge in interest in women’s sports. College basketball is dominating the national narrative like never before, the WNBA is growing in popularity, college volleyball is setting attendance records, and Team USA is gearing up for what could be the most-watched Olympics in a decade after the 2020 Games were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Melissa Stockwell grew up wanting to be an Olympic gymnast after being inspired by the biggest star of her time, Retton. She told The Athletics that at youth gymnastics competitions she imagined herself standing on the floor and listening to the national anthem after scoring a perfect 10.0.
Stockwell, who also had a chapter in Laflin’s book, had the chance to represent her country on the podium, but her triumph came as a Paralympic triathlete after she, a former U.S. Army officer, first female American soldier to lose a limb in active combatStockwell’s vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2004.
Six months into her stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, she saw a flyer on the wall advertising an information session about the Paralympic Games. She attended the session, led by Persian Gulf War veteran John Register, a two-time U.S. Paralympian who reinvented himself as a competitive athlete after undergoing a leg amputation in 1994.
“There were a few of us in the room, but it felt like he was speaking directly to me,” Stockwell said. “I left that room and somehow I knew I wanted to be a Paralympic athlete and represent our country.”
Stockwell eventually became the first Iraq War veteran to qualify for the Paralympics, in 2008, in swimming. She later won a bronze medal as a triathlete at the 2016 Games, sharing the podium with two other Americans — on the pivotal date of September 11.
“It’s going to go down as one of the greatest moments of my life,” Stockwell said. “Obviously, it’s September 11th and I’m wearing that Team USA uniform. … Standing on that podium is a moment I’ll never, ever forget.”
Joyner-Kersee’s thoughts on her time on the medal podium were focused on those who supported her journey to Olympic glory. Since her retirement from competitive athletics, she has sought to repay those who helped her achieve her dreams, dedicating her life to training the next generation of athletes and leaders through her Jackie Joyner-Kersee FoundationShe also supports athletes trained by her husband, legendary track and field coach Bob Kersee.
“Through sports, you learn a lot about leadership, teamwork and how all of those skills are transferable off the playing field,” she said. “You learn to appreciate each other, but you also learn a lot about what you want to do. You learn about your own confidence, but also how can I make someone else feel that way too?”
The 2012 Summer Games in London were the first to feature women competing in all sports on the programme. Since 1991, any new sport wishing to join the Olympic programme must have women’s competitions.
Many Olympic champions feel compelled to keep the momentum going. Joyner-Kersee believes the growth of women in sports has an impact far beyond the playing field.
“You look at women in athletics from the standpoint of looking at the leadership role — they’re not just players now,” she said. “You look at them as leaders of universities — athletic directors — and they’re sitting at the table brainstorming.
“You get other people involved to really understand that someone may not be the best athlete, but they bring something very tangible that will make a company very successful.”
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletics; photos: Jamie Squire and David Madison / Getty Images)
