On a day the U.S. women’s soccer team won a gold medal, and the U.S. women’s water polo team won a gold medal, and the U.S. women’s basketball and volleyball teams advanced to championship games expected to fetch two more gold medals, it was a boxer who epitomized the spirit of America’s women athletes at the London Games.
Claressa Shields is 17 years old, preparing for her senior year of high school in Flint, Mich. You’ve heard of Hope Solo, the former University of Washington goalkeeper whose stellar work proved instrumental in her team’s revenge-exacting victory over Japan?
Claressa Shields on Thursday loomed as USA Boxing’s solo hope. After the men were denied a medal for the first time in the history of the boxing competition, Shields found herself facing Nadezda Torlopova, a Russian middleweight almost twice her age.
The teenager from the Rust Belt outpunched, outmaneuvered and easily outpointed her opponent in the gold medal bout, then explained the successful game plan with a question:
“If a girl’s going to stand right in front of me, why not hit her?”
Boxing has been reduced to the Summer Games rummage bin since those years when Howard Cosell was bellowing into a microphone at ringside, introducing the likes of Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Tacoma’s Sugar Ray Seales to American television viewers who never imagined prime-time Olympic events moving from steamy arenas to temporary beaches installed in front of a city skyline.
But Claressa Shields is blessed with a telegenic presence to match her precocious talent. Even if she doesn’t ensure a return of USA Boxing to its glory days – and she might – Shields will be remembered as one of the breakout stars of an Olympics rich with American women emerging as breakout stars.
From the tumbling mat to the swimming pool to the boxing ring, the U.S. leads the athletic world in teen spirit. Gabby Douglas, 16, is the fresh, new face of American gymnastics. Missy Franklin, 17, is the fresh, new face of American swimming. And then there’s Claressa Shields, the freshest, newest face of all.
“If a girl’s going to stand right in front of me, why not hit her?”
But it’s not as though the veterans haven’t contributed to the U.S. women’s medal haul. The Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, combined for three golds in tennis. The tandem of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings – the New York Yankees of beach volleyball – took gold on Wednesday by extending their unbeaten Olympic streak to 21 matches.
Then there are the more traditional team sports. The first-place finishes in soccer and water polo weren’t surprises, and merely a prelude to the seemingly inevitable championships awaiting the U.S. women in volleyball and basketball.
The volleyball team, through seven matches, has lost two of 21 sets. If the words “volleyball” and “legend” aren’t often pronounced consecutively, Destinee Hooker has the name, and the game, to qualify as a volleyball legend.
As for the women’s basketball team? With a 39-game Olympic winning streak on the line Thursday, it finally got tested against Australia and Lauren Jackson. Australia achieved what amounted to a moral victory, scoring 73 points while holding the Americans to 86.
“The American women’s basketball team,” Canada coach Allison McNeill said in London, “may be the most dominant team in team sports.”
Credit for the American women’s status as a superpower in international basketball – and let’s face it, as a women’s sports superpower in general – must go to the U.S. Congress, which passed a law 40 years ago that guaranteed gender equity in college athletics. It’s known as Title IX, and if ever you hear somebody grousing about the problems of complying with Title IX, consider the scoreboard from London.
Through Thursday, the U.S. gold-medal count looked like this: 39 overall, 26 won by women. In 1972, the year Title IX was passed, the U.S. women won 10 golds in Munich, Germany – eight in swimming, another in diving, another in archery.
About the correlation between Title IX and the U.S. women who have owned the floor (and the pool, and the track) at the London Games, Donnia Lopiano, former president of the Women’s Sports Federation, told the Miami Herald: “There is no doubt, in anybody’s mind, this is a direct function of our having the strongest sports law in the world as far as gender equity.
“We are way ahead of the world in the rights of women to compete,” Lopiano continued, “and young girls now are making demands because of the images they’re seeing through global media, images like we’re witnessing at the Olympics.”
The American men, meanwhile, haven’t embarrassed themselves. Michael Phelps culminated his unparalleled swimming career, winning four gold medals along with two others mined from a metal foreign to him, silver.
Portland’s Ashton Eaton on Thursday won the decathlon, which used to be – and should be – tantamount to the title of “World’s Greatest Athlete.”
And unlike its counterparts in volleyball, soccer, water polo and team gymnastics, the U.S. men’s basketball squad appears headed for a gold medal.
But the American men are support players in London because these Summer Games are all about the American women.
“It started with the individual sports, and the team sports kicked in at the 1996 Olympics,” Lopiano told the Herald. “Next you’re going to see us winning in traditional men’s sports (such) as wrestling, boxing and weightlifting. It’s a domino effect.”
Claressa Shields, though only 17, is an expert on the domino effect. She hit her opponent from Russia, and hit her hard.
Then she hit her again.
john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com
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