Huffington (Issue #07)

THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE

YOUR GAMES GUIDE

NBC GOES FOR GOLD THEN & NOW DREAM TEAM MOM ATHLETES

JULY 29, 2012

THE OLYMPICS ISSUE CLARESSA SHIELDS K.O.s BOXING BARRIERS

07.29.12 #07 OLYMPICS SPECIAL ISSUE

Enter POINTERS: God as Coach, Murray Returns, Too-Sexy Cheerleaders MOVING IMAGE DATA: Building the Best Olympian Q&A: Jessica Hardy

Voices DAVID GOLDBLATT & JOHNNY ACTON: How to Watch the Opening Ceremony DOMINIQUE MOCEANU: Women’s Gymnastics: Who’s the Money On?

Because we’re girls, we know that we have to fight harder.”

TERRY LYONS: The Dream Comes True QUOTED

Exit ATHLETES: What’s Next After The Olympics GAMES: Discontinued Olympic Sports EWISE: Avoiding Spoilers Online

WOMEN AND THE GAMES

BY KAVITHA A. DAVIDSON

OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

YOU VOTED: HERE ARE THE TOP 12

THEN AND NOW

GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK: Paralympian Anjali Forber-Pratt

NBC’S OLYMPIC TRIALS

TFU

LEGENDS OLD AND NEW

BY MICHAEL CALDERONE

WATCH OUT

FOR UPSETS AHEAD

FROM THE EDITOR: Women Who Wouldn’t Go Away ON THE COVER: Photograph for

Huffington by Sean Hagwell

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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Women Who Wouldn’t Go Away EYOND THE ATHLETIC breakthroughs, the quest for excellence, and the amazing personal stories, this year’s Olympic Games in London offer another reason to celebrate. As Kavitha A. Davidson, a really talented HuffPost intern with a passion for sports, writes in this week’s cover story, the 2012 Games represent several milestones for women athletes: women’s boxing will make its debut; Qatar and Brunei are sending women athletes for the first time; and, in another first, every sport is now open to female competitors.

These developments, each one seemingly small in itself,

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are part of a larger story in the world of women and sports. Last month we celebrated a milestone in the story, with the 40th anniversary of Title IX, which has had lasting positive effects on women’s athletics. Kavitha’s piece, featuring interviews with women athletes and coaches from the 1960s to today, brings that legacy into sharp focus just in time for this year’s Games.

Whether they competed years ago or are suiting up for the first time in London, the women featured here are bound together by their talent, determination and passion for their respective

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

sports. And they are part of an ongoing narrative going back decades. Like Nancy Lieberman, the basketball star who was part of the USA’s silver medal-winning 1976 squad in Montreal, the first year women’s basketball was included as an Olympic event. Or Claressa Shields, who will represent the USA in London as part of our country’s first-ever women’s boxing team. She is 17.

The basketball coach Lin Dunn puts it this way: “I’m thrilled now to see some of these young women that have benefited from the work through the last forty, fifty years of women who just wouldn’t go away.”

In addition to spotlighting the demands women athletes have made over the years, Kavitha’s piece also illustrates the ways in which the powerful forces of the status quo have worked to stifle and slow down women’s efforts.

The history of women’s sports is filled with fears, rumors and junk science: including the shibboleth that women are too delicate for contact sports, that they might suffer reproductive damage, or sexually lose control of them-

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selves. Even Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, said in 1928 that the exertions that distinguished male athletes were “much to be dreaded” when it came to women.

As silly as these claims sound to us today, they still preThe vail in many different women forms, in countries featured here like Saudi Arabia, are bound which forbids womtogether by en’s participation in their talent, national athletics but determination is sending two female and passion athletes to London in for their what some critics say sports.” is merely a PR move.

“As far as female athletes have come, there’s still work to be done,” Kavitha writes.

In the coming weeks, as the eyes of the world turn to London, we have an amazing opportunity to tap into the spirit of the Games, celebrate the progress women athletes have made so far, and give thanks for the women who just wouldn’t go away.

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RUNNER GETS DIVINE COACHING

American Olympic runner Ryan Hall listed God as his coach on a standard drug test he gave after the U.S. half-marathon championships. In 2010, Hall was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid and stopped training under his previous coach, Terrence Mahon, who reportedly questioned his dedication. “Once I knew he kind of lost faith in me a little bit, that was a real shifting point,” Hall told the New York Times. “My coach has to believe in me. That’s the most important thing, probably.”

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ANDY MURRAY RETURNS TO WIMBLEDON

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After losing to Roger Federer in the Wimbledon final, Andy Murray will return to Centre Court for the Olympics. Last seen at Wimbledon in tears, Murray told the AP that returning to the site of his defeat will “give me an extra motivation.

I can’t see it as being a negative.” The British tennis star will have two chances to medal: in singles and in doubles, with his brother Jamie.

ADIDAS VIA GETTY IMAGES (MURRAY); COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY ATHLETICS/GENE BOYARS (FARRAG)

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TORCH BEARER WARMS TO TATTOO TYPO

An Atlanta woman’s Olympic dreams came true when she was chosen to carry the torch through Derby in England on June 30 — but they were dampened when she got her first tattoo to mark the occasion. Terri Peterson, 54, went to a Georgia tattoo parlor with a drawing of a torch logo and the words “Olympic Torch Bearer” — and ended up with a permanent misspelling. She was a good sport about it and even refused the tattoo artist’s offer to fix it. “It’s fine,” she told the BBC. “It’s the Oy-limpics — it’s as unique as I am.”

ATHLETE TO COMPETE DURING RAMADAN FAST

A Muslim-American fencer is trying to figure out how to give the performance of his life while going without food or water during daylight hours. Sherif Farrag, who was born in Egypt, will compete for the Egyptian team during the holiest Islamic month. He vows to fast while training but hasn’t decided about game day yet. “Just like eating and drinking helps you with life, when you’re in a fasting state of mind, it does help you mentally and spiritually,” Farrag told The Huffington Post. More than 3,000 Muslims are competing, and many have said they will not fast.

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POINTERS

MICHELLE OBAMA HEADS TO LONDON

The First Lady will lead the presidential delegation to the 2012 Olympic games, and she hopes her trip to London will help spotlight her antichildhood obesity campaign, Let’s Move.

“I wanted to turn that Olympic inspiration into action,” she told reporters. “By using these Games as a way to get more kids up and moving.”

AP PHOTO/JACQUELYN MARTIN (OBAMA)

TOO 6 CHEERLEADERS SEXY TO PERFORM

THAT’S VIRAL THE DANCING HURDLER TAKES THE INTERNET

BY STORM

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An Olympic cheerleading squad in the U.K. won the public’s love with a bikiniclad version of “Call Me Maybe,” but that didn’t get them to the Games.

The Crystal Palace Football Club’s cheerleaders beat the North London Wildcats 32 percent to 27 percent in a popular vote, then Britain’s Got Talent judge Alesha Dixon announced that the Wildcats would perform in London. “Personally I think she wanted something that was not so stereotypical — girls running around in bikinis or short hot pants, shaking their butts and other bits,” Wildcats coach Jenny Toghill told the Telegraph.

A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories.

HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES

TOM CRUISE HAS ALREADY MOVED ON?!

CHICK-FIL-A COMES OUT AS ANTI-GAY

SEX ASSAULT VICTIM CHARGED FOR NAMING ATTACKERS

FRED WILLARD PULLS A PEE-WEE HERMAN

Enter Double Duty MICKEY KELLY, Modern Pentathlon

Not only is Kelly an Olympic athlete — she’s also a captain in the U.S. Army. This will be her second trip to the Olympics as an alternate.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JENNIFER POTTHEISER

Danielle Elliot contributed reporting to this piece.

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Kelly with her 8-month-old daughter, Lily.

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Enter CANDACE PARKER, Basketball

After winning two NCAA championships with the University of Tennessee and Olympic gold in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Parker will take to the court in London with another gold medal in mind.

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PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

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Parker with her daughter, Lailaa, 3.

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LAURA KRAUT, Equestrian

Winning gold in the 2008 Beijing Olympics wasn’t enough for Kraut — she will defend her title during a third appearance in the Olympics.

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Kraut kisses her son, Bobby, 13.

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KELI SMITH-PUZO, Field Hockey

Smith-Puzo tentatively retired after competing in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but came out of retirement ahead of the London Games.

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Smith-Puzo holds her two sons: Xavi, 2, and Ian, 11 months.

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KHATUNA LORIG, Archery

After competing for the Georgian and Soviet Olympic teams, Lorig will make her fifth Olympic appearance with the U.S.

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Lorig with her son and fellow archer, Levan Onashvili.

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LASHINDA DEMUS, Track and Field

Demus will make her long-awaited Olympic return after narrowly missing the team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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Demus with her 5-year-old twin sons Duaine, left, and Dontay, right.

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TAYYIBA HANEEF-PARK, Indoor Volleyball Three-time Olympian HaneefPark will try to best a silver medal in Beijing with a gold medal in London.

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Haneef-Park with her son, AJ, 2.

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DANIELLE SCOTT-ARRUDA, Indoor Volleyball

Scott-Arruda is one of three American female athletes in history to make five Olympic appearances.

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Scott-Arruda holds her niece, Madison, 3, and her daughter, Julianne, 2.

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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION OR ILLUSTRATION

BY TROY CREDIT DUNHAM: TK STADIUM TOP TO BOTTOM: JAMIE MCDONALD/GETTY IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK

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DATA

Building the Best Olympian

From archery and artistic gymnastics to weightlifting and water polo, the Summer Olympics presents sports utilizing virtually every physical attribute. With so many of the world’s top athletes in one place, it’s tempting to compare and contrast the relative skills that brought them to London. Here we’ve culled the most inimitable traits from a selection of the world’s foremost athletic specimens to build two perfect Olympians.

- Chris Greenberg

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Q&A

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Jessica Hardy Got Back in the Pool After a suspension in 2008, Hardy is ready for the 2012 Games

THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS PAGE: CARLOS SERRAO/SPEEDO

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F SISYPHUS SWAM then his career might have looked like Jessica Hardy’s did after she failed to qualify for the London Olympics in her signature event, the 100-meter breaststroke. Hardy’s U.S. Swim Trials defeat may have confirmed her critics’ worst opinions. Already a world record holder in the breaststroke, Hardy qualified for the 2008 Games but never reached Beijing, withdrawing after testing positive for a banned substance. Although it was later ruled she unknowingly ingested a tainted supplement — one produced by a sponsor — Hardy faced a one-year suspension. Training all the while, Hardy arrived at the 2012 Trials primed for success. ¶ Then she was beaten. With her Olympic dream seemingly dashed again, Hardy did the only thing she could: She got back in the pool. — Chris Greenberg

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Hardy withdrew from the 2008 Games after she tested positive for a banned substance.

Enter Coming after your suspension and battle for reinstatement, how devastating was the defeat at the Olympic Trials in your top event? I was hurt really bad. I mean crying for about 24 hours. I was a little bit of a basket case but that’s natural if you don’t make it when you’re definitely a favorite, you’re the world record holder and all of that. So, I had a healthy 24-hour grieving period and then my fiance helped pull me back up. And then my coach slapped me around and brought the toughness back into me to face the freestyle as a true competitor instead of just rolling over.

And about that 100-meter freestyle win? That was pretty much pure shock. I never ever thought I was going to win that race because the people I was racing are amazing. Allison Schmitt is an amazing freestyler right now and Lindsay Franklin is unstoppable basically in every event she swims. Natalie Coughlin is a seasoned veteran that I’ve been racing my entire career. Going into that, I had my hands full and I was just hoping to make it top six to make the relay.

And getting first?

I mean, I wasn’t looking around during the race so when I saw my name on the scoreboard it was

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disbelief almost because it was amazing, way past my expectations. [I was] so grateful to make the Olympic team because of everything I’ve been through, in 2008 especially.

Did your approach to the freestyle change after the breaststroke loss? I think if my breaststroke kicked on as I’d hoped, I would have had

I wasn’t looking around during the race so when I saw my name on the scoreboard it was disblief because it was way past my expectations.” a good freestyle because I would have had confidence and excitement. But I don’t think they would have been that good because I was racing with so much heart and love and everything I had put on the line.

How has your appreciation for such success changed since earlier in your career? It’s extremely different. In 2005, I made the national team and I broke a world record and won three gold medals [at World

STEVEN GEORGES/PRESS-TELEGRAM/CORBIS

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Championships] without ever thinking I was qualified to come close to doing that. So, it kind of stumbled on my lap back then, and now I’ve been dreaming of being an Olympian since that time.

What kept you from dedicated to the sport during your ban? I don’t think I could’ve survived it without everything lining up the way it did.

My family was a huge support. My mom is a psychotherapist. She was, you know, literally checking

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up on me, making sure I was OK. Even that alone, I couldn’t have survived that without her.

After the suspension as well as the drama at the Trials, how does it feel to be heading for London? It hasn’t really sunk in that I’m going to the Olympics because I’ve been in this position before. I’ve swam in all the Trials, I’ve gotten to go to camp for a little bit. So, I think it’ll be a little bit slower for it to sink in for me to fully process what it all means when I get there.

But right now, I’m just on another level of happiness.

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Jessica Hardy has qualified to swim the 100m freestyle, the 50m freestyle and the 400m freestyle relay.

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DAVID GOLDBLATT & JOHNNY ACTON

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How to Watch The Opening Ceremony

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T MIGHT BE kitsch, it might be a touch formulaic, but the biggest global TV audience of the Olympic games is not for the men’s 100m or indeed any sporting event, but for the opening ceremony.

Governments and organizers know this and, in the case of the Chinese politburo, were happy to sanction a budget of $150 million for just under four hours of action; a strange amalgam of global ritual, TV Spectacular, Broadway musical, firework display on steroids and post-modern circus. Âś That said, it is not a complete free-for-all, there is a basic structure to the occasion. Rather like synchro nized swimming and ice dance, the Olympic opening ceremony has a free artistic program and set of compulsory figures that the IOC insists upon.

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David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton are co-authors of How to Watch the Olympics

Voices The former is the host’s chance to send a message to the world. The compulsories feature all our favorite Olympic icons — flags, oaths, anthems and flames.

THE ARTISTIC PROGRAM Once upon a time this was a matter of a few military bands and a bit of country dancing before the athletes shuffled off to warm up. However, in an era of global TV coverage, this will not do, and the show is now choreographed down to the last detail—even the final countdown.

Everyone around London 2012 has insisted it isn’t possible to top Beijing or compete with it in scale.

However, in an interesting break with protocol, Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire and artistic director of the London 2012 opening and closing ceremonies, has given us a glimpse of what is to come. It looks intriguing: a stadium-size recreation of the British countryside, the mosh pits of the Glastonbury festival, sheep and ducks, rain clouds and the National Health Service.

That said once the countdown is done it is anyone’s guess what’s coming next. Moscow 1980 began with a very Russian-looking bunch of Greeks walking into the stadium

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with sacred flames. Los Angeles 1984 started with a spaceman and a jet pack, Seoul 1988 commenced on a giant river barge ten miles away from the stadium. Sydney 2000 had a formation horse troupe.

THE COMPULSORY PROGRAM: I LOVE A PARADE The mime and dance is done and it’s time for the athletes; each team is led out by a standard bearer, plus an athlete carrying the national flag. The Greeks always open proceedings and the hosts bring

Everyone around London 2012 has insisted it isn’t possible to top Beijing.” up the rear. Apart from that, it’s teams in alphabetical order, once around the track and line up in the middle. With over 200 teams and many thousands of athletes this may take some time. Look out for newly formed states or newly independent micro-nations that are making their debut.

THE SPEECHES The speeches are presumably scheduled here to allow everyone

Voices a trip to the toilet and time for a quick cup of tea. Expect anodyne offerings from Jacques Rogge, President of the IOC, Lord Coe of the London organizing committee and the declaration that the games are open from Her Majesty.

ANTHEMS AND FLAGS The order varies a little but coming up is the arrival of the Olympic Flag—usually carried by past Olympians in white jump suits— and the playing of the Olympic anthem. This is an instantly forgettable choral number written for the 1896 games in Athens. Some ceremonies do it in the original Greek. In an attempt to deal with the minefield that is linguistic politics in Catalonia, Barcelona had verses in Catalan, French and Spanish. The organizers at Munich 1972 thought a German version too complex so they went with an instrumental instead.

FLAME ON Finally the Olympic torch will appear and the Olympic cauldron will be lit for the duration of the games. Barcelona did it with a flaming arrow shot through the air, Athens had a gigantic cigarette lighter on a pivot and Beijing had

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the final torch bearer run round the roof of the Bird’s Nest stadium.

BRING ON THE BIRDS It was once standard form for doves of peace to be released prior to the lighting of the Olympic flame. However, in Seoul in 1988, many of the birds came to rest on the rim of the cauldron and were incinerated by the Olympic flame.

Doves are now released afterwards and in Beijing they were replaced by symbolic fireworks.

The speeches are presumably scheduled to allow a trip to the toilet.”

NO CHEATING, PROMISE! Next up are the athlete’s and official’s oaths, taken by one person on behalf of all the others, where they promise to be jolly good sports and not take drugs. At Los Angeles in 1984, hurdler Edwin Moses stalled midway through the oath and was forced to repeat the same sentence three times before finally getting back on track.

Today’s autocue, sadly, make a repeat unlikely.

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WOMEN’S GYMNASTICS:

Who’s the Money On? NOW THAT THE chalk dust has settled and the U.S. Olympic team selection by the “committee of experts” has been deliberated, gymnastics fans are attempting to make sense of the exhilaration, confusion, and sorrow of the U.S. Olympic Trials and shift their focus toward London.

Team USA has benefited con-

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siderably from the dissolution of the Soviet Union—with loads of superb coaches immigrating to America to run gymnastics schools with their technical knowledge and coaching philosophies in tow, to say nothing of the individual efforts of the current gymnasts and their families.

In Tokyo last year, the U.S. women claimed the world team title by an enormous margin, with their physicality proving to be too much

Dominique Moceanu is an Olympic Gold Medalist and author of Off Balance, a memoir

Voices for the challengers to handle. It’s probably worth noting, though, that if patterns are anything to go by, Team USA was also a dominant winner at the World Championships held in Anaheim (2003) and Stuttgart (2007), but went on to be an upset on the sport’s greatest stage—the Olympics—in Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008). Right now, that elusive team gold medal is the Americans’ to lose, but much will hinge on the training program and decisions of National Team Coordinator Marta Karolyi in the days leading up to the competition.

Realistically, only four teams are competing for the medals. USA, Russia, Romania, and China will square off in what should be a promising marquee matchup. Team USA had a 2.317-point lead after the first event in Tokyo due to the strength of the Americans’ vaulting—and they never looked back.

This time, expect the vaulting deficit for the challengers to shrink. While USA is still the clear favorite, I predict the lead will alternate throughout the Games and we’ll be seeing some exciting competition from those other three outstanding teams.

Much of the media has counted China out, but both Huang Qiush-

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uang and Yao Jinnan had the scoring potential to win the world allaround title last year, and team depth is no longer a factor in the 5-3-3 team format that was instituted in 2001. With the finest execution of the field, I still believe China, the defending Olympic champion, is a significant threat.

Romania looked less than sensational in Tokyo, but the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Champions are

With the finest execution of the field, I still believe China, the defending Olympic champion, is a threat.” on the upswing—and just in time.

Veteran leaders include triple Olympic gold medalist Catalina Ponor and Olympic Floor champion Sandra Izbasa. And if you haven’t heard of Larisa Iordache before this year, don’t be embarrassed. Gymnastics doesn’t get the attention it deserves in the popular media until the Olympic Games, but this 16-year-old possess the highest scoring potential of any gymnast in the world.

Opinions vary widely on how Russia can be expected to perform,

Voices but there is no dispute that their London squad will be the strongest team they’ve assembled since the Soviet break-up. The Silky, slender Viktoria Komova has a dancer’s physique and is the spitting image of her mother Vera Kolesnikova, the 1986 Goodwill Games Champion. I believe Komova epitomizes artistry, and must serve as the young leader if Russia is to challenge for gold.

As for the events themselves, the balance beam is where Team USA may second-guess its team composition. Romania is sure to gain ground on this event as consistency defines their tradition. Russia’s balance beam performances have not been consistent of late, but they have the potential to hold their ground. Beam wobbles, missed connection bonuses, and falls can erase any team’s dreams for gold in the blink of an eye.

Floor exercise will also be a critical event in revealing the Olympic team title, as it will be the last competition for the finalists. I believe it was a costly mistake by Karolyi to not encourage fresh choreography for floor routines for the three U.S. gymnasts likely to compete in the team final. As usual, I want all competitors to nail their performances and have the gym-

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nasts determine the results rather than the politics of judging, but subjectivity and previous performances are a fact of life in judging and this fact may hurt Team USA in the final rotation. If artistry is truly a virtue in gymnastics, the advantage could go to the Romanians and Russians.

I want all competitors to nail their performances and have the gymnasts determine the results rather than the politics of judging.”

Team USA didn’t accidentally become the top team on the planet last year, but Romania and Russia will represent a substantial step up in competition since Tokyo. I know it sounds like hedging, but there is a real chance that Romania and Russia could stay close to Team USA after vaulting and surpass them as they build strength on their respective key events. That said, I’m sticking with what I’ve said since the U.S. Nationals and predicting that Team USA will capture the gold medal after four hard fought rotations of gymnastics.

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TERRY LYONS

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The Dream Comes True THE DREAM TEAM had flown from San Diego, Calif., to Portland, Ore., after its celebrated training camp against a group of collegiate hotshots. I was exhausted but somewhat invigorated with the fact we had just staged the first NBA Draft event held outside of New York City. On the road since mid-April, it was time for a new ballgame. I was one of a handful of people in charge of the media operation and, really, the overall operation of the pre-Olympic qualifying event, the Basketball Tournament of the Americas.

Yes, the United States had to qualify for men’s basketball at

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the 1992 Olympic Games and we had a pretty good team. Scratch that. We had the greatest team ever assembled.

I didn’t realize it until the first game in Portland. Although I was intimately involved in every personnel announcement, including the naming of Detroit Pistons coach Chuck Daly to head up our adventure, I was perhaps too preoccupied with my NBA assign-

Terry Lyons is editor of DigitalSportsDesk. com and was NBA Director of Media Relations during the Dream Team 1992 showing

Voices ments to consider the massive impact about to be made. To a man (or woman), no one involved with the NBA nor the nation’s basketball governing body, ABAUSA, realized the juggernaut we held in our midst.

We were working in the old Portland Memorial Coliseum and I knew the building well. Capacity was 12,666, a figure I will never, ever have to look up or double check. It was chosen because of its intimacy and the fact the NBA and its new business partner, now called USA Basketball, doubted its ability to market tickets for just six basketball games featuring the U.S. squad and 24 others involving unheralded teams from North, Central and South America attempting to qualify for the Olympics.

As the first game was about to tip-off, I found myself counting up the number of chairs along press row, making certain every reporter had a place to work.

I glanced up just as the United States team had broken its huddle and took the court.

Chuck Daly juggled the starting lineups throughout the tournament and the Olympics, but, as I recall, that first huddle broke and

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Larry Bird, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan took off their USA shooting shirts and walked towards the center circle for the Dream Team’s first official jump ball in international competition.

The opponent was Cuba and those players must’ve been thinking the same thing I was: Holy shit.

As the U.S. players headed out from the bench, their names emblazoned on the backs of their uniforms, years of hard work

No one involved with the NBA nor the nation’s basketball governing body realized the juggernaut we held in our midst.” came together in a moment. Dating back to some light lifting at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics when collegiate basketball players represented the USA — while every other nation utilized its non-NBA professionals — I had worked in some capacity to help our basketball federation. On April 8, 1989, the international governing body for basketball,

AP PHOTO/SUSAN RAGAN

Voices FIBA, conducted a vote to create a fully “open competition” for basketball at the Olympics, World Championship and other major competitions. The USA and then-Soviet Union were amongst the “nay” voters but the resolution passed overwhelmingly, 5613 with one abstention.

I was on the phone with David Raith, Turner Broadcasting’s head of the Goodwill Games, and I relayed the message and the vote totals from Munich, Germany, to NBA Commissioner David Stern in our midtown Manhattan offices.

Stern was lukewarm on the whole concept and was happy to have a selection of the college stars represent the U.S. and then come to the NBA as hand-delivered household names, mostly for their efforts in the NCAAs but partially due to their Olympic triumphs.

Stern realized the long, long road from the ’89 vote to the ’92 Olympics and he assigned NBA Deputy Commissioner Russ Granik, Stern’s trouble-shooter extraordinaire, to the task of negotiating the mess. In 1990, I was among a small group of sports executives who attended a conference in Colorado Springs to lobbyfor, and eventually create, the first

TERRY LYONS

“PR” job for USA Basketball. Now, it was late June 1992 and our efforts had come to fruition.

In particular, Granik’s work was extraordinary and it resulted in this unbelievably gifted collection of athletes taking to the court in Portland to tip-off what would be a 136-57 dismantling of Cuba. The Dream Team worked towards a 6-0 record and, obviously, a Tournament of the Americas gold medal and successful qualification for the Barcelona Olympic Games. Even then, I don’t think anyone associated with the inner workings of the team realized what was ahead.

Comparing the Dream Team to the Beatles is quite a comment. So, in my view, Portland was the Cavern Club and Barcelona was Shea Stadium. And, just like the Beatles, the best had yet to come.

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The Dream Team celebrates in 1992.

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QUOTED

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“ My maternity leave will be a few weeks long, and I’ll work throughout it.”

—Marissa Mayer

JASON KEMPIN/WIREIMAGE (OLIVER); AP PHOTO/EVAN AGOSTINI (MAYER); SHUTTERSTOCK (MONEY)

to Fortune on how her pregnancy will affect her new role at Yahoo!

“ I love John Oliver.

Once in your life everyone should travel outside of the U.S. and look at American politics —HuffPost at a distance.” commenter Tom Sito You know, soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country.

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on the NCAA’s measures against Penn State

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She’s one of only a few who actually earns her salary.”

She’s young, successful and dedicated. You can’t fully understand [marriage] until you do it.

— Russell Brand

to Howard Stern about his divorce from Katy Perry

“ Ladies and gentlemen, we’re screwed.”

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on fracking and the oil companies on The Late Show

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on Hillary Clinton’s new travel record

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FEATURES WOMEN AND THE GAMES OLYMPIAN MOMENTS THEN AND NOW NBC’S OLYMPIC TRIALS WATCH OUT

WOMEN AND THE GAMES

Claressa Shields, 17, will represent the U.S. as women’s boxing is introduced at the Olympics.

I

YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, LADIES.

BY KAVITHA A. DAVIDSON PHOTOGRAPH BY SEAN HAGWELL

N MONTREAL 36 YEARS AGO, an 18-year-old from Far Rockaway, N.Y. stood with 11 teammates on a podium.

Newly adorned in silver medals, they were among the first female basketball players to be honored by having their nation’s flag raised above them to the rafters of an Olympic stadium. ¶“I got goosebumps,” recalls Nancy Lieberman, who after the Olympics went on to have what is widely acknowledged as one of the most successful careers in women’s basketball history. She is to date the youngest person, male or female, to win an Olympic medal in basketball.

But on that day in July 1976, she says she wasn’t simply thinking about herself. “You tried out for you, but you played for your country,” she notes.

The 1976 Montreal Games were the first to include women’s basketball, the culmination of decades of advancement in female

athletics on one of the sporting world’s biggest stages. It was also a harbinger of the progress to come in international women’s sports. In the years since, the Olympics have voted to include events such as women’s soccer, women’s ice hockey, and, most recently, women’s boxing.

With the historic inclusion of women’s boxing, the 2012 London Games will be the first Olympics

TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

in which every sport is open to female competitors. The only sports that remain non-inclusive are closed to men: rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming.

“I’m thrilled now to see some of these young women that have benefited from the work through the last forty, fifty years of women who just wouldn’t go away,” says Lin Dunn, who has coached basketball at the collegiate, professional, and Olympic levels despite never being allowed to step

foot on a court as a player herself. “We’re seeing the benefits of that struggle now, and in turn, we’re getting these enormously elite athletes.”

This year’s Olympics will also see the nations of Qatar and Brunei sending female athletes to the Olympics for the first time. After months of back-and-forth speculation, Saudi Arabia ultimately announced that it would send a woman to the London Games despite the fact that no female athletes managed to qualify in Olympic trials. 2012 thus marks the first year in which every par-

Competitors take aim during the Women’s Archery event in the 1908 Olympic Games in London.

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ticipating nation is represented by at least one woman.

Yet, despite extremely diverse backgrounds and circumstances, the hurdles all female athletes have had to overcome to reach the 2012 Olympics are similar to those that their predecessors encountered, mirroring the challenges women faced in basketball in the ‘70s and, to a large degree, still face in many of the events.

Questions surrounding the definition of “womanhood,” the aesthetic beauty of female athletes, and the way in which they are marketed differently than men still arise, even at the highest level of competition. Often, the differences between the way men and women are appraised as athletes comes down to something as simple as their uniforms. After the the Australian women’s basketball team popularized a skintight, one-piece Spandex uniform in 1995, other European teams attempted to follow suit over the years in order to make their female athletes more appealing to male audiences.

“I think it’s really sexist,” says Asjha Jones, a member of the WN-

BA’s Connecticut Sun who played in the EuroLeague and will make her Olympic debut in London, of the Spandex uniforms. “I don’t even think it’s about money or drawing more attention, because in Europe they already have all this support. There was no need to try to force it on people.”

Other female athletes say that they’re often compared side-byside with men — rather than sideby-side with other women.

“You see us compete against other women, and you see we can be just as physical,” says Swin Cash, who plays for the WNBA’s Chicago Sky and will be competing in her second Olympics this year with Team USA Basketball.

“But people always ask me, ‘What would happen if you played LeBron James?’ Why does that matter? Don’t compare me to LeBron James — compare me to Sheryl Swoopes or Lisa Leslie.”

Comparisons aside, the crop of women entering the 2012 Olympics recognize that they are an unusual lot — in number, in opportunity, and in terms of what they have inherited.

“I’ve been fortunate,” Jones says. “I grew up during a time where I knew no better. I didn’t have to go through the struggles

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that women had to go through in the past. This wasn’t always given to us; we weren’t equal.”

AP PHOTO

WE HAVE TO FIGHT HARDER This year, the London Games will host female boxers from 23 countries spanning six continents, including three from the United States. The women’s field is significantly smaller than the men’s and the International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) has come under fire for encouraging female boxers to wear skirts in the ring. Though it stopped short of requiring skirts as uniforms, the organization updated its rules in March to allow “either shorts or the option of a skirt.”

The AIBA says the purpose of the new clothing policy is to distinguish between male and female competitors, who might otherwise be indistinguishable due to protective headgear.

Despite these flare-ups, many athletes say they are simply looking forward to taking advantage of the international stage that the Olympics provides and showing the world what they can do in the ring.

“Since it’s only three of us, we really have to go out and represent,” says Claressa Shields, one of the three female members of Team USA. “Because we’re girls, we know that we have to fight harder. You’re going to see the best in women’s boxing at the Olympics. People are going to say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know a female could box like that.’”

For Shields, 17, boxing in the Olympics isn’t just about personal glory and success — it’s also

Nancy Liberman-Cline wears her 1976 Olympic silver medal and her 1977 Junior PanAmerican Games gold medal.

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WOMEN AND THE GAMES

about continuing the dreams of her father. A former underground boxer, Bo Shields landed in prison when his daughter was just two years old. She was nine when he was released.

“He had been in and out of prison for a long time,” Shields says.

“He said he wasted his life and he wasn’t able to live up to his potential. His passion was boxing.”

Shields made it her mission to carry out her father’s dream. She started boxing when she was 11, competing in her first fight at the age of 12. Four years later in the

fall of 2011, she won the middleweight title in her first open-division tournament, qualifying her for the Olympic trials. She earned her Olympic berth at the world championship in May, suffering her only defeat of the season and bringing her record to 26-1.

Women’s boxing, which had been shut down for most of the 20th century due to the violence of the sport, was revived by the Swedish Amateur Boxing Association in 1988. In 1993, USA boxing lifted its ban on amateur women after federal courts ruled that it constituted gender discrimination.

The AIBA added women’s boxing to its world championship in 2001,

Connecticut Sun forward Ashja Jones pulls up for a shot against the San Antonio Silver Stars in WNBA league play.

“ People are going to say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know a female could box like that.’” while the Pan American Games included the sport in 2011.

“Women’s boxing has been gripped by a huge wave of popularity in recent years, accentuating the great commitment, expertise and passion demonstrated by female boxers around the world,” wrote Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu, president of the AIBA, in the organization’s proposal to the International Olympic Committee for Olympic inclusion. “It is the aim of AIBA to see these athletes rewarded with the opportunity to demonstrate their class and skill by competing at the highest level — the Olympic Games. It is the pinnacle in sport and women’s boxing deserves nothing less.”

WOMEN’S BOXERS ARE well aware of the stigma that accompanies participating in an aggressive, traditionally masculine event. Perhaps more than any other Olympic sport, boxing is controversial for

its operatic violence and the lingering health consequences that arise from being punched routinely and regularly. Critics have focused on the sport’s savagery, though some observers say that allowing women to box may raise the sport’s international reputation (while still exposing the athletes themselves to beatings).

“If women come in, people will feel the sport is more common, not so dangerous, and that would be a very good thing for the image of boxing,” Bettan Andersson, vice-chairperson of the AIBA’s women’s commission, said in 2008, a year before the IOC voted to include women’s boxing in the London Games.

Beyond the sport’s violence and debates about its suitability for women, critics also contended that women’s boxing simply wasn’t competitive internationally. For her part, however, Shields believes that denying female boxers access to the Olympics condemned the sport to mediocrity because it discouraged stronger competition. The best cure, she

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says, was for the IOC to open the door to athletes like her.

“For them to not even put us in the Olympics and have us fight in junior women’s tournaments, they were keeping us isolated from each other, so they were slowing down our progress,” she says.

“Now, girls go to nationals. As we get more matches, more women are coming to the sport.”

Shields is hoping that the media exposure that comes with an event like the Olympics will help elevate women’s boxing in the eyes of the public.

“People are on the outside looking in when they need to get in the action and try to see what’s going on. Then they’ll see that women’s boxing is an elite sport,” she says.

“At the Olympics, they’re going to see the best in women’s boxing. That’s what I think is going to change people’s minds. ”

STEPS OF THE DEVIL Whatever Olympic strides women in Europe and North America have made, many of their counterparts elsewhere in the world are stuck in a time warp marked by limited

choices and little support. Among all the countries that participate in the Games, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Brunei are the only ones that have yet to send a female athlete to the Olympics. Qatar and Brunei have pledged to rectify that this year, while Saudi Arabia remained a question mark until recently.

Qatar will send shooter Bahiya al-Hamad, swimmer Nada Arkaji, and sprinter Noor al-Malki. The decision comes amid pressure by the IOC for Qatar to send women, as well as the country’s own domestic push to make sports a hallmark of its international appeal.

Qatar has already won the right to host the World Cup in 2022, and is in the midst of campaigning for an Olympic bid in 2020.

The country has worked to heighten women’s sports since the establishment of the Qatar Women’s Sports Committee in 2001.

Since that year, Qatari women have competed in international tournaments on national teams including basketball, soccer, and volleyball.

Brunei will send Maziah Mahusin, a 400-meter hurdler who was granted one of the universality spots that the IOC issues in order to maintain equal opportunity and participation. Both countries have repeatedly asserted that their failure to send

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female athletes to the Olympics before was due to a dearth of talent and not discrimination.

The situation in Saudi Arabia is more complicated. In May, a local newspaper quoted Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee President Prince Nawaf bin Faisal as stating that he did “not approve of Saudi female participation in the Olympics at the moment.” On June 24, the Saudi Embassy in London announced that women who qualified would in fact be allowed to compete. But less than 24 hours

after the BBC reported the inclusion of equestrian Dalma Malhas on the Saudi national team, she was disqualified by the Olympic federation; it was revealed that her horse had been inactive and therefore ineligible for months, leading to accusations of tokenism and public-relations posturing on the part of the Saudi government.

AFTER THE SAOC reported that “[no] female team taking part in the three fields” available to athletes had qualified, international media outlets and advocacy groups, including Human Rights Watch, called on the IOC to ban Saudi Ara-

Qatar’s Shaikha Al Mohammed, Mehbubeh Akhlaghi and Bahiya Mansour Al Hamad after winning gold at the Doha Arab Games.

“ A whole ideology developed around women as being less competitive by nature and less physically aggressive and in need of more protection.” bia for violating the gender equality provision of the Olympic Charter.

The resulting backlash sent the SAOC scrambling to find a replacement for Malhas, a task made all the more difficult by the Saudi government’s active campaign to suppress female athletics. In February, Human Rights Watch published an extensive and highly publicized report on Saudi Arabia’s effective ban on women’s participation in national competitive sports. The ban is part of a broader government policy that limits the mobility of Saudi women, who live under a system of male guardianship and are prohibited from driving.

According to the report, the policy “reflects the predominant conservative view that opening sports to women and girls will lead to immorality: ‘steps of the devil,’ as one prominent religious

scholar put it.” Under the policy, there are no physical education programs for girls in state-funded schools. Additionally, in 2009 and 2010, the government actively shut down women’s gyms while refusing to grant licenses to fitness facilities for women.

It was in this climate that the SAOC made what cynical critics describe as a calculated decision to send two female athletes to London in order to distract from the larger, systemic issues surrounding women’s sports in the country.

“Allowing women to compete under the Saudi flag in the London Games will set an important precedent,” said Christoph Wilcke, senior Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement following the July 12 announcement. “But without policy changes to allow women and girls to play sports and compete within the kingdom, little can change for millions of women and girls deprived

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of sporting opportunities.”

Despite the barriers still in place in Saudi Arabia against women’s athletics, the IOC is celebrating the announcement as an achievement in international cooperation.

“This is very positive news and we will be delighted to welcome these two athletes in London in a few weeks time,” said IOC President Jacques Rogge in a statement. “The IOC has been working very closely with the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee and I am

pleased to see that our continued dialogue has come to fruition.”

Still, Sarah Attar — who will be running the 800m for Saudi Arabia — and Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani — who will be competing in judo — represent a departure from the past. The women are participating in the Olympics under the IOC’s universality rule, and have the unprecedented opportunity to show their countrymen and the world what Saudi women can do given the chance to compete.

“A big inspiration for participating in the Olympic Games is being

Claressa Shields (blue) fires a right hook against Pooja Rani (Red) during the AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships.

GARY DINEEN/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Chicago Sky center Sylvia Fowles (left) and power forward Swin Cash (right) will represent the U.S. in London.

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one of the first women for Saudi Arabia to be going,” Attar said in a statement released by the IOC. “It’s such a huge honour and I hope that it can really make some big strides for women over there to get more involved in sport.”

PROTECTED SPACE “[T]he ruggedness of male exertion, the basis of athletic education when prudently but resolutely applied, is much to be dreaded when it comes to the female,” Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, told Le Sport Suisse, a Swiss magazine, in 1928. “That ruggedness is achieved physically only when nerves are stretched beyond their normal capacity, and morally only when the most precious feminine characteristics are nullified.”

Alas, de Coubertin was hardly alone. Received wisdom during much of the period after he revived the Games in 1896 held that females were weak and — to take things a step further — in danger of suffering reproductive damage or the loss of sexual control if they competed athletically. As

historian Susan K. Cahn notes in her book, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in TwentiethCentury Women’s Sport, experts warned of the “overzealous girl” who was so incited by competition that she could not stop, and would inevitably succumb to the “pitfall of over-indulgence.”

Cahn notes that while advocates from all sides agreed a century ago that women had the right to participate in sports, they differed on what was suitable. A particular point of contention were the so-called “games of strife” — physical sports such as track and field and basketball.

Until the 1920s, female Olympians were relegated to the “gentler sports” such as tennis, golf, archery, and swimming. While these sports surely required strength, agility, and quickness, the fact that they were elite sports and the context in which they developed made them more suitable for women.

“Country clubs were a sort of protected space for women, the same way that women’s colleges were a place where women’s sports developed,” Cahn says.

“They were places where women could play outdoors, but it wasn’t especially public. And it was part of sociability, so it wasn’t seen as

“ When you win that silver medal tonight and stand on that podium, you will change women’s basketball and the perception of women’s sports for the next 25 years.” any real threat to men’s physical or social dominance.”

In 1922, however, women began to take international competition into their own hands. French organizer Alice Milliat helped sponsor the first Women’s Olympic Games, held in Paris. Although the Americans were outmatched by their more experienced European counterparts, the Women’s Olympics were a huge success and male athletic officials took notice. In 1923, the all-male IOC first considered women’s track and field for Olympic inclusion, electing to add five events to the 1928 Games.

The IOC’s grudging support offered an international platform for a new kind of woman athlete, one who could excel at sports previously construed as unladylike. At

the same time, women were also getting more enfranchised politically. In 1924, Glenna Collett, an American golfer, told the magazine Women’s Home Companion that “American women, in the first quarter of the twentieth century, have won two rights; the right of exercising the suffrage and the right of participation in sport.”

Such triumphs were shortlived. In the build-up to the 1928 Amsterdam Games, the press had already begun to speculate that the IOC had gone too far in including long-distance women’s events like the 800-meter race.

After the race was complete, six of the nine female runners fell to the ground exhausted — a spectacle that the media jumped on and which critics used to justify their resistance to women’s participation in athletic events.

In due course, IOC officials

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WOMEN AND THE GAMES

banned women from competing in middle- and long-distance events in the Olympics for more than 30 years.

In a 1929 article opposing female track and field competitors, Frederick Rand Rogers, an educator and pioneer in physical fitness testing, wrote that the Olympics “are essentially masculine in nature” and would cause women to sacrifice their “health, physical beauty, and social attractiveness.”

Nowhere was this fear more evident than in the resistance to women’s basketball. To spare women the stress, public educators mandated that women play a half-court game with teams of six rather than five. As Cahn notes in her book, the new model of women’s basketball reflected “an ongoing effort among educators and popular promoters to make ‘masculine’ sport compatible with womanhood.”

It wasn’t until the women’s movement of the 1960s that the charge of the “mannish” female athlete would come under fire.

In that climate, activists took to the national stage to fight for

gender equality. Congress passed the Educational Act of 1972, which included a provision addressing gender discrimination: Title IX, which became a primary catalyst for greater participation in women’s sports despite the fact that it doesn’t explicitly address athletics.

“What happened when it passed, those of us in the athletic field, we embraced it and used it as a way to open the doors to opportunities in sports,” says Dunn, who is now the head coach of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever and once

Jackie JoynerKersee takes flight in the qualifying rounds for long jump during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

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served in the Olympics as an assistant basketball coach. “The last 40 years, Title IX has really been associated with sports. That really wasn’t the initial intent.”

TITLE IX WAS hotly debated for the next several years by school administrators who didn’t want to spend the resources to implement women’s sports at the same rate as men’s. It wouldn’t be fully implemented until after 1976 — the first year that women’s basketball became an Olympic sport.

Nancy Lieberman had just turned 18 in July that year. She remembers sitting in the locker room before the silver medal game with fellow future Hall-of-Fame players like Pat Summit, Ann Meyers, and Lusia Harris, as well as head coach Billie Moore.

“Billie says, ‘Ladies, tonight is more than just a game,’” Lieberman remembers. “‘When you win that silver medal tonight and stand on that podium, you will change women’s basketball and the perception of women’s sports for the next 25 years.’ And she was absolutely right.”

In the years since, the Olympics have expanded to include events

such as women’s soccer, women’s ice hockey, women’s weightlifting, and, of course, women’s boxing.

BE EVER VIGILANT Decades later, that shift in perception can be seen in the rise of today’s female athletes and the support structures — both institutional and familial — that have contributed to their success.

Team USA Basketball members Swin Cash, Sylvia Fowles, and Asjha Jones each point to the support of their families as pivotal reasons they pursued sports careers, also noting that basketball kept them off the streets and led them to the college classroom.

When Jones was 10 years old, her father signed her up for a recreational league on the weekends in her hometown of Piscataway, N.J. She had been playing for years with friends on a casual basis, and her dad — who, in her words, “was more of a brain” than an athlete — recognized that she had a talent for the game.

“I think he just felt that I was going to be good at it,” she says. “I had already loved basketball, and I think it was keeping me active and giving me something healthy to do.”

Fowles and Cash first picked up a basketball around six years old,

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playing pick-up games with their brothers and male cousins. Fowles credits sibling rivalry with her desire to push herself on the court.

“My brothers did encourage me,” she says. “They were very hard on me. Once I started playing organized basketball, it was kind of easy for me.”

While her mother was skeptical about basketball’s potential detriment to her schoolwork, Fowles took care to balance sports with academics. Ultimately, it paid off, earning her a scholarship to the University of Louisiana.

“If it weren’t for basketball, I wouldn’t have been able to go to

college,” she says. “Basketball gave me the opportunity to go to a university and also do something that I loved. If it wasn’t for a scholarship, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

Cash also took advantage of her big family to fine-tune her ballhandling skills. She says that eleven aunts and uncles and 75 first cousins helped instill a competitive spirit in her from an early age.

“I just had a passion, I just love to compete,” Cash says. “I was also really blessed to have my mom, who encouraged me to try all the different sports. I had a pretty great upbringing with regards to sports and being allowed to express myself through those activities.”

Cash’s mom also coached her on neighborhood teams, and en-

Indiana Fever head coach Lin Dunn motivates her team before facing the Chicago Sky in Indianapolis, Ind.

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couraged her to get serious about her athletic career when the college letters started flowing in around 8th grade. That’s when Cash — who was also involved in track, baseball, softball, cheerleading, and theatre — decided to focus solely on basketball. Cash also points to the role basketball played in molding her during her formative years.

“I grew up in a tough neighborhood where having the ability to play different sports in school kept me engaged,” she says. “It kept me around other people that were trying to do positive things.”

All of these women say they recognize everything that paved the way for them to participate in the Olympics — crediting both Title IX and the pioneers of women’s basketball who forged their way to the Games in 1976.

“It’s the starting point that has opened up all these other doors,” says Cash. “When you open one door, you walk through, then you open another one. I think it really was the catalyst for changing sports not only in the U.S., but also the world.”

As far as female athletes have

come, there is still work to be done.

WNBA coach Lin Dunn, who awarded the first full scholarship to a female athlete at the University of Miami and who later built the women’s basketball program at Purdue, points to lingering disparities between men’s and women’s teams. She sites unequal access to sports equipment and scholarship money at the collegiate level, and subpar salaries and media exposure on the professional level, as signs of how much work is left to be done. That fact was on full display last week as the Japanese soccer team made headlines when the world champion women’s team was relegated to economy class during a 12-hour flight to Paris while the men’s team sat in business.

“Be ever vigilant,” Dunn says.

“Just because you get a bite, doesn’t mean you don’t want the whole piece. It’s a constant push to keep demanding more to say what’s fair and equitable. Over a period of time, people learn to accept changes and be a little more open-minded, and I’ve seen that over the last 40 years. It just takes time, and I think we’ll continue to see progress in all of these areas.

You haven’t actually seen the best of the best yet.”

OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

SINCE THE FIRST SUMMER OLYMPICS IN 1896, THE GAMES HAVE BEEN FILLED WITH UNFORGETTABLE MOMENTS. HERE ARE THE TOP 12, AS DECIDED BY A VOTE AMONG HUFFINGTON POST READERS.

GETTY IMAGES

BERLIN, 1936

U.S. sprinter Jesse Owens lunges forward at the start of the Men’s 200-meter dash in the 1936 Summer Olympics.

Owens took home a total of four gold medals, including the Men’s 100-meter, 200-meter, long jump and 4x100-meter relay.

OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

MEXICO CITY, 1968

AP PHOTO

U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith John Carlos raise clenched fists in racial protest as the Star Spangled Banner plays during the Men’s 200-meter medal ceremony.

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MEXICO CITY, 1968

TONY DUFFY /ALLSPORT/GETTY IMAGES

U.S. long jumper Bob Beamon flies through the air before notching a record-setting 29-foot jump.

Beamon’s record would stand until 1991.

PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

AP PHOTO/MICHAEL PROBST

OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

ATLANTA, 1996

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali lights the Olympic flame during the Opening Ceremony. Formerly known as Cassius Clay, Ali won Olympic gold in 1960.

PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

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OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

ATLANTA, 1996

U.S. gymnast Kerri Strug grimaces in pain as she is carried away after injuring her leg during the vault competition.

PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

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OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

ROME, 1960

Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila runs barefoot toward victory in the Men’s Marathon event.

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OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

BEIJING, 2008

Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt crosses the finish line of the Men’s 200-meter dash. Bolt won gold and broke the world record.

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OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

MUNICH, 1972

A member of Palestinian terrorist organization Black September looks out from a balcony in the Olympic Village after holding several members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage.

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OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

LOS ANGELES, 1984

U.S. gymnast Mary Lou Retton celebrates after seeing her score in the Balance Beam event.

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OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

BARCELONA, 1992

(Left to right) U.S. basketball players Scottie Pippen, Michael Jordan and Clyde Drexler of the “Dream Team” celebrate with their gold medals.

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OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

SYDNEY, 2000

U.S. wrestler Rulon Gardner celebrates after defeating Russia’s Alexandre Kareline in the 130-kilogram Men’s Greco Roman Wrestling final.

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OLYMPIAN MOMENTS

BARCELONA, 1992

AP PHOTO/DENIS PAQUIN

Great Britain runner Derek Redmond cries out in pain as his father helps him finish the 400-meter race.

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THEN AND NOW

LEGENDS OLD AND NEW

PASCAL RONDEAU/ALLSPORT

AS WE REMEMBER THE BRIGHTEST STARS OF GAMES PAST, YOUNG ATHLETES IN LONDON ARE TRYING ON THEIR BIG SHOES

STEFFI GRAF, 1988

THEN

NOW

Arguably the best women’s tennis player of all time, Graf captured Olympic gold in 1988.

AP PHOTO/UWE LEIN

THEN AND NOW LEGENDS OLD AND NEW

VENUS & SERENA WILLIAMS, 1999

THEN

NOW

Serena defeated her sister Venus during their final match at the 1999 International Tennis Grand Slam Cup in Munich.

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THEN AND NOW LEGENDS OLD AND NEW

PAU GASOL, 2012

THEN

NOW

Gasol will be playing for Spain in London and is currently a star with the Lakers.

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THEN AND NOW LEGENDS OLD AND NEW

THEN

NOW

JORDYN WIEBER, 2012

In 2012, Wieber is a relative veteran at 17 but she is tipped to grab the spotlight in London.

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THEN AND NOW LEGENDS OLD AND NEW

CLARESSA SHIELDS, 2012

THEN

NOW

Shields, 17, will be representing the U.S. as women’s boxing makes its Olympic debut.

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THEN AND NOW LEGENDS OLD AND NEW

NEYMAR, 2012

THEN

NOW

Brazilian soccer star Neymar is one of the most in-demand players in the world.

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THEN AND NOW LEGENDS OLD AND NEW

LOLO JONES, 2010

THEN

NOW

Jones was favored to win the 100-meter hurdles in Beijing in 2008 but tripped while competing. She’s back in 2012 to try to take home the gold for the U.S.

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THEN AND NOW LEGENDS OLD AND NEW

USAIN BOLT, 2011

THEN

NOW

Jamaica’s Bolt competes in the 200-meter heats at the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships in Daegu.

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NBC’S OLYMPIC TRIALS

IN A QUEST FOR RATINGS GOLD, NBC CAN’T AFFORD TO STUMBLE

BY MICHAEL CALDERONE ILLUSTRATION BY ZOHAR LAZAR

AS NBC UNIVERSAL WAS gearing up for roundthe-clock coverage of the Olympics, chief executive Steve Burke recalled his fears of a competitor swooping in and getting broadcast rights to the games after London. Burke, who landed the top job at 30 Rock after Comcast took control, described last summer’s pitch to the International Olympic Committee as a “binary moment” for the newly merged company.

“We would either come home with the games, or we would come home without the games,” Burke said. “And as the new sort of people showing up in this building, it would have been an awful thing to come home without the games.”

Fortunately for Burke, who was previously Comcast’s chief operating officer, the team succeeded, and NBCUniversal will be the goto place for the Olympics through 2020. It’s a long-term strategy that carries some possibly lucra-

tive benefits down the line, but also sizeable risks for a company still in the process of merging its various holdings under one roof.

On a recent morning, Burke wasn’t thinking about risks.

He focused instead on rewards, while talking up the London games from Studio 8H, the legendary home of Saturday Night Live. The Olympics, he said, are vital “for the soul of the company,” along with its brand, financial future and ability to show-

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case the many different parts of NBCUniversal and Comcast.

“There’s nothing more important to us than the Olympics.”

The brief Olympics takeover of NBCUniversal was apparent in Studio 8H, which NBC sports reporter Michelle Beadle described as a “little London away from London.”

NBC is trying its best to make the windowless space a bit more like Jolly Old England for those staffers not among the 2,800 who’ll be actually on the ground in London during the games.

There was a “Downing Street”

sign and London Olympics posters hung up in the makeshift “highlights factory.” During competition days that can stretch to 18 hours, NBC staffers will churn out highlight clips from 32 sports for use on television, online and on mobile devices. Staffers glancing up from their computers can glimpse Big Ben or the London Eye Ferris wheel, famous sights depicted on a large wall hanging.

Creating “little London” is just one example of how the Olympics permeate the NBC network, and now, the larger Comcast-NBCUniversal juggernaut. For 17 days, it’s all Olympics all the time.

NBC needs to produce the

London Mayor Boris Johnson speaks to the media in February as giant Olympic rings are towed along the River Thames.

“ We can’t worry about what the other guys are doing and what the other guys are saying. Slow and steady wins this race.” games without a hitch. And the company has more on the line this time around. NBCUniversal executives are hoping that the Olympics can help revive NBC’s sagging primetime ratings, kickstart the Today show, which recently dropped out of the top ratings spot for the first time in 16 years, and get viewers to recognize its newly rebranded NBC Sports Network, a relative newcomer in a cable sports media world dominated by ESPN. Simultaneously, the post-merger NBCUniversal team needs to show Wall Street that it can pull together its various content and distributions arms for a major event. The Olympics is the executive team’s chance to prove the merger made sense and won’t go the way of others, like AOL Time Warner, which came together in grand fashion only to later pull

apart. The Olympics serves as a thread that weaves throughout the entire company and, in Burke’s view, is a worldwide spectacle that’s inextricably linked to NBCUniversal.

That view wasn’t always clear.

Some industry-watchers doubted whether executives hailing from the cost-conscious cable giant, which already paid G.E. $6.5 billion last year for a majority stake in NBCUniversal, would pledge billions more to outbid rivals like ESPN and FOX and keep the games within the Peacock Network, which has been home to the Olympics broadcast since 1988.

It’s not that the Olympics lost its luster. The games remain one of the most prestigious events in all of television, a global spectacle capable of drawing more than 200 million U.S. viewers over the course of a couple weeks. In the age of DVR, and amid increased fragmentation across media, the primetime Olympics telecast is

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NBC’S OLYMPIC TRIALS

still considered must-see TV across demographics. Advertisers want to be tied to the games, which are ratings gold.

However, the huge expense of obtaining rights and then producing the games would understandably give pause to a new management team hoping to cut down on red ink. NBC reportedly lost $223 million on the 2010 winter games in Vancouver and is expected to lose money on the London games, the rights of which were sold years before the Comcast deal.

And costs aside, NBCUniversal

executives were forced to head to Lausanne, Switzerland, to try and obtain post-London rights without Dick Ebersol, the long-time NBC Sports chairman and Olympics overseer who resigned in May 2011 after reported clashes with the new regime.

But roughly six weeks after Ebersol’s much-publicized departure, Burke’s fears were allayed.

NBC not only won broadcast rights to the next two games — in Sochi (winter 2014) and Rio de Janeiro (summer 2016) — but also the following two Olympics, thus keeping the network tied to the worldwide sports extravaganza through 2020.

NBC News president Steve Capus, left, and executive producer Jim Bell, right, speak during a press conference.

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NBC’S OLYMPIC TRIALS

The price: $4.4 billion.

Andrew Billings, a University of Alabama professor and author of the book Olympic Media: Inside the Biggest Show on Television, says the $4.4 billion bet could prove to be a smart one for the company, especially given the possible impact on its sister cable networks. Still, he notes, there are risks that accompany such a huge investment.

“There are always unforeseen events that could make the NBC deal through 2020 a boondoggle — the threats from a social media-based, 24/7 news cycle will likely only be greater in the future,” Billing says.

NBC is already operating in a very different media landscape than just four years ago. Since the summer games in Beijing, Facebook has grown from 100 million to more than 900 million subscribers, while Twitter has jumped from a relatively minor group of users to over 140 million today. The Wall Street Journal recently noted that there were more Olympics-related tweets in one day of London trials than in the entire Beijing Olympics.

NBCUniversal executives say they’re optimistic about the impact of social media — that platforms like Twitter and Facebook will help elevate interest throughout the day and drive more viewers to primetime. That strategy will be proven right or wrong by the Nielsen numbers. And if ratings drop significantly in primetime, executives may be forced to re-evaluate how to produce the Olympic spectacle in an everchanging media world that could look vastly different in eight years.

Billings adds that not yet knowing the location of the 2020 games makes it difficult to ascertain the value of the telecast. “It is all about time zones if they continue to seek the ‘live to tape’ format for the primetime telecast,” he says. (In a live-to-tape format, the announcer calling the game or event was recorded live as it happened, rather than a studio announcer later describing the action recorded earlier).

“The biggest threat to NBC’s telecast down the road is that we continue to develop new avenues for information and that these threats would force NBC’s hand,” said Billings Location is always a wildcard — and not just because of how

PAUL DRINKWATER/NBC (3)

time zones can throw off hopes of broadcasting live. Geopolitical conflicts have impacted the games in recent decades, from the Munich massacre during the 1972 games to the U.S. and Russia boycotts during the 1980 and 1984 games, respectively. The threat of terrorists making an Olympics attack has loomed over every recent games.

The $4.4 billion cost may prove a bargain in the long run, but could also be a black hole that the relatively new management finds itself stuck in for years to come.

While executives hope to trim losses around the 2012 games, they’re quick to point out the ancillary benefits of producing the Olympics that go beyond

profits and losses in the company ledger, such as promoting other shows or networks now under one umbrella. And the games, says one executive, will also serve as a “billion-dollar lab” for the network, allowing researchers to analyze media consumption habits of millions of people across demographics and platforms.

NBC’s coverage begins on July 27 with the dramatic opening ceremony, a classically over-thetop kick-off to the games. For 17 nights, NBC — along with its affiliated networks and online platforms — will carry 5,535 hours of coverage of the London Olympics, nearly 2,000 more hours than it did four years ago in Beijing. In total, that amounts to 231 days of coverage in just two and a half weeks.

Left to right: NBC Sunday Night Football anchors Bob Costas, Dan Patrick and Al Michaels.

“ There’s nothing more important to us than the Olympics.”

The NBC broadcast network will air 272.5 hours of coverage of the summer games, including increased daytime hours that build to the primetime crescendo.

Cable networks MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo and Telemundo will also be airing games each day, while NBCOlympics.com will be home to live, streaming coverage of every event and the awarding of all 302 medals — a first in Olympics history. Online access is free to anyone with a cable or satellite television subscription that includes MSNBC and CNBC. Some NBCaffiliated networks will focus on specific sports, such as tennis (Bravo) and boxing (CNBC).

In addition, the rebranded NBC Sports Network will air more than 300 hours of coverage — the most of any network — and serve as the home for U.S. team sports, including basketball, women’s soccer and field hockey.

Perhaps most important, executives hope the Olympics will

raise the profile of the fledgling NBC Sports Network, which until earlier this year, was Comcast’s profitable, albeit little known, Versus sports channel. Comcast has invested in sports before by way of its regional networks and the Golf Channel, along with ownership of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team and past ownership of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team. But analysts see a company’s taking great strides in the sports game since merging with NBCUniversal.

“They’ve always played around the margins of big time sports,” says Craig Moffett, a media analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. “In some ways, the Olympics is Comcast’s ticket to being a tierone sports player.”

But can they afford it?

“17 DAYS OF SUPER BOWLS” Since stepping in to fill Ebersol’s big shoes a few months after the merger, NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus hasn’t been

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NBC’S OLYMPIC TRIALS

shy about the network’s sports ambitions, which stretch beyond popular weekend events like Sunday night football and producing the Olympics every couple years.

Lazarus, according to a December New York Times profile, hopes to “build a sports empire.”

At 30 Rock last month, Lazarus remarked on the network’s “longterm agenda with the NBC Sports Network,” describing the Olympics as “another seminal moment” in its evolution.

Shortly after securing longterm Olympic rights last summer, NBC began working with brand consulting and creative agency

Troika on sharpening the identity of NBC Sports — primarily viewed as a weekend TV option — and the 24-hour sports network, which would later drop Versus and rename itself after the network’s sports operation.

Troika creative director Gil Haslam says his firm’s “job was to bring focus and clarity under one brand tradition” and, in the process, created a platform called “Immersive Moments” that focused on the core storytelling brand of NBC Sports that stretches across both broadcast and cable. The idea, he said, is for the viewer to “feel like you’re inside the family of NBC Sports,” whether watching Football Night in America on NBC, a hockey

Left to right: U.S. Olympic gymnasts Carly Patterson, Mary Lou Retton and Nastia Liukin speak with Matt Lauer on Today.

GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A suspended camera films a close-up shot of soccer balls at a soccer game in Turin, Italy.

“ There are always unforeseen events that could make the NBC deal through 2020 a boondoggle — the threats from a social media-based, 24/7 news cycle will likely only be greater in the future.” game on NBC Sports Network, or the Olympics across NBCUniversal channels, websites and mobile platforms.

Jon Miller, president of programming for NBC Sports and NBC Sports Network, says that when viewers “come to see an NBC Sports branded property, they know that it’s going to be real quality content.” Production values are the same level whether on broadcast or cable, he says, thus offering a seamless transition for viewers switching back-and-forth.

But potential viewers first need to find the network, which doesn’t have ESPN-type place-

ment high up, but may fall another hundred or so channels down the dial. While hardcore hockey and soccer fans may have sought out the NBC Sports Network in recent months for games on the network, and are thus familiar with the slight name change, executives predict the Olympics will be a much bigger draw. The summer games, Miller says, is like “17 days of Super Bowls.”

Already, Miller says, dedicated Olympics fans are finding the network to watch early round trials for swimming and track and field, which he considers “a really good indication that foreshadows once we get to London.”

Billings views the creation of the NBC Sports Network as “a

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NBC’S OLYMPIC TRIALS

recognition that NBC wants to get back in the game” of competing for big-time sports broadcast contracts. Of course, the Olympics could be an outlier, and aren’t necessarily indicative of how the company will perform in other sports broadcasts.

While Billings notes NBCUniversal is “putting some muscle behind that channel,” they’re not going to approach ESPN-levels over night. Right now, Billing said no sports network “is even remotely close to competing with ESPN.” But he did see a possible

parallel to ESPN’s trajectory, in that neither Versus nor the reigning champ of sports media drew much attention in blockbuster media deals.

When Disney acquired ABC in 1996, the inclusion of ESPN was an afterthought compared to the attention paid to the sale of the prestigious, “Big Three” broadcast network. But these days, ESPN is Disney’s most valuable media property.

While executives would surely be pleased if the rebranded NBC Sports Network achieves anywhere near ESPN’s post-merger success, they’re keeping expectations down for the time being.

Incoming fans and athletes will be able to see Richmond Park’s massive Olympic rings from the air.

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NBC’S OLYMPIC TRIALS

Miller says he considers ESPN the “gold standard” and says that such comparisons with the 34-year-old sports network are off base, especially since “we’re barely six months old.”

“We can’t worry about what the other guys are doing and what the other guys are saying,” Miller says.

“Slow and steady wins this race.”

NEEDING A HIT The Olympics aren’t only geared toward the hard-core sports fan who can’t leave the house without a SportsCenter fix. It’s a more diverse audience and one of only two major sporting event that draws more women than men. (The Kentucky Derby is the other).

So when it comes to crosspromotion, NBC isn’t only interested in the sports media market but also wants to get viewers excited about its fall line-up. The network is trying to turn around its rating woes with a comedypacked, fall schedule, a formula that’s worked in the past with sitcom smashes like The Cosby Show, Seinfeld and Friends.

“You can’t get a better launch-

ing pad,” says Jessica Reif Cohen, a media analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “This is their chance to set up the network and give it a shot in the arm.”

Still, it remains to be seen if the strategy pays off, because, as Billings says, “the promotional benefits of the telecast are difficult to predict.”

“Certainly the NBC Sports Network helps and they’ll do everything they can to provide optimal synergy,” Billings continues. “Nonetheless, with DVRs now in 45 percent of all U.S. homes, some promotions will be skipped. We love to say sports are DVR-proof, but the truth is they’re just less likely to be timeshifted than virtually all other programming. People will timeshift the already time-shifted live-to-tape Olympic telecast.”

Given this problem with traditional spot promos during commercial breaks, Billings suggested that the network may opt more for “promos within the Olympic telecast itself.”

But even if some heavily promoted falls flounder, NBC executives would be happy if at least one gets a ratings boost and keeps up the pace long after breaks down the Olympics sets and returns home.

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“NBC desperately needs a hit.

And all it takes is one,” Moffett says. “And if they can get one hit show out of Olympics by generating a sufficiently large audience that eventually sticks, then the promotion will be judged a huge success.”

AP PHOTO/JESSICA HILL

“A PRIMETIME MINISERIES” Bob Costas, who makes his ninth appearance as Olympics host in London, describes the games as “a primetime miniseries spread out over nearly three weeks.”

But gone are the days when Olympics fans could only find out who won a race or match by tuning in that evening. Real-time results are now available online and over social media, while viewers can also watch events on tablets, mobile devices and laptops when not in front of a television.

Executives decided against trying to prevent fans from seeing the action in real-time if they choose to and instead suggest that their livestream strategy could drive viewers to primetime.

“If someone is ambitious enough to get up at six in the morning to see the 10,000 meter race walk, and they see it and it’s good,

Left to right: NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

The games, says one executive, will also serve as a “billion-dollar lab” for the network, allowing researchers to analyze media consumption habits of millions of people across demographics and platforms. they’ll tell 10 friends, ‘You should watch the race walk at prime time,’” Burke recently told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s hard for me to believe that someone is going to watch streaming and not be a booster of what they saw more times than not.”

Still, primetime is still key when it comes to drawing advertising dollars and promoting shows that NBC’s pinning its hopes on this fall. Executives hope that daytime viewing on cable or online — along with engagement through social media — drives more viewers to primetime, where the focus is more on highly-produced narrative packages instead

of serendipitous emotional peaks and troughs of live sports.

NBC’s primetime focus in London is unlikely to be too different than what they created in Beijing or past summer games. For decades, NBC’s primetime has been dominated but three sports: swimming, diving and track and field.

When programming those hours, executives have long figured out that some sports work and others don’t. For instance, the network wouldn’t show a full Olympics boxing match in primetime, both because it would cut into a far great chunk of programming than a 100-meter race and also possibly turn off the larger, female viewership. Instead, boxing fans can head to CNBC for entire matches or watch online.

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Every niche sport is now available to watch live.

The primetime broadcast has to appeal to casual sports viewers who may not watch another swimming competition until the Olympics heads to Rio in four years. For that reason, Costas said it’s the network’s job to know not only names of athletes, but also to get across “what’s at stake, and what the likely dynamics of the competition are... to give them some kind of backstory about at least some of these competitors, to give them a reason to be invested in it.”

While Costas hosts primetime,

veteran sports broadcasters Al Michaels and Dan Patrick will host weekday and weekend daytime coverage, with Mary Carillo hosting late night. NBC has also tapped Ryan Seacrest and tennis great John McEnroe for packages on Olympics athletes. Overall, NBC will have about 2,800 credentialed NBC workers in London, from on-air talent like Today’s Matt Lauer and late-night host Jimmy Fallon, to numerous producers and crews that make the broadcasts happen.

NBC also has a new primetime producer for the first time in decades, Today executive producer Jim Bell.

Bell got his start in television during 1992 Olympics in Barce-

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NBC’S OLYMPIC TRIALS

lona when he was hired to assist an NBC executive, who was in a wheelchair at the time, get around the city. Ebersol noticed Bell and later hired him at the network. Bell, a former Harvard University football player, ascended up the network ladder to eventually oversee the profitable morning show. (Ebersol, who learned the craft under the legendary ABC executive Roone Arledge in the 1960s and later commandeered NBC’s long-running primetime strategy, signed on an adviser this time around.)

It’s unlikely Bell will deviate greatly from Ebersol’s strategy, a huge influence on how the Olympics is produced for television.

Bell said the “first order of business is arranging the prime time broadcast, and then from there the other shows flow, the daytime show, the programming decisions, they get made.” As the competition continues, Bell said, “things will change, storylines will develop, and I think one of the most important roles will be, once that torch is lit, reacting to what’s happening, and making changes if needed.”

Costas considers his nightly role as similar to Olympics’ past, regardless of the many ways media is now consumed and shared.

“You know, there are a lot of things that technology has brought us, and these additional, you know, tubes of communication have brought us that are wondrous, and a lot of it is just crap,” Costas said. “You know, the more you broaden anything out, it’s like American Idol auditions, you let everybody audition, and you’re going to find some diamonds in the rough.

You’re also going to find people who would be lousy singing in the shower.”

Costas says that “the essence of what’s good hasn’t changed.”

According to him, it still comes down to the skill of the individual commentator.

“So some of the features may be shorter because of attention span, some of where we funnel the viewership may be different,” he said, “but the way in which I anchor the games, based on what they ask me to do, is not much different.”

“At the heart of it,” he said, “is to tell stories well.”

Rebecca Ballhaus contributed reporting assistance.

WATCH OUT FOR UPSETS AHEAD

ADIDAS VIA GETTY IMAGES

YOU’LL WATCH FOR YOUR FAVORITE ATHLETES BUT MAY COME AWAY TALKING ABOUT THESE OLYMPIC-SIZED THREATS.

ANDY MURRAY: Tennis, Great Britain

Tennis star Andy Murray is currently the top ranked competitor in the UK and is ranked No. 4 in the world.

Murray became the first British tennis player to reach the Wimbledon final since 1938.

Watch Out, Roger Federer.

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QUI BO: Diving, China

Young Chinese diving hopeful Qui Bo took home two gold medals at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics in Singapore in the 3-Meter Springboard and 10-Meter Platform events.

Watch Out, Tom Daley.

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RYAN LOCHTE: Swimming, United States

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In 2011, American swimmer Ryan Lochte won five gold medals at the FINA World Championships. He currently holds three world records.

Watch Out, Michael Phelps.

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PHIL DALHAUSSER AND TODD ROGERS: Beach Volleyball, United States

Dalhausser and Rogers took home the gold for the U.S. in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and will make another run for it in London against a strong Brazilian team.

Watch Out, Alison Cerutti and Emanuel Rego.

WATCH OUT FOR UPSETS AHEAD

YOHAN BLAKE: Track and Field, Jamaica

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Jamaican phenom Yohan Blake took home two gold medals at the 2011 IAAF World Championships in the 100-meter dash and 4x100-meter relay.

Watch Out, Usain Bolt.

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YOUSEF KARAMI: Taekwondo, Iran

Iran’s Yousef Karami isn’t new to international competition — he took home a bronze medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics and won gold at the 2011 World Taekwondo Championships.

Watch Out, Steven Lopez.

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ATHLETES

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What’s Next?

BY CHRIS GREENBERG

 OLYMPICS Decathalon 1972, 1976

FROM TARZAN AND the Senate to the Kardashian clan, there’s no telling where an Olympian might end up after the Games. Although life can be notoriously difficult for Olympians as they find themselves farther from the glow of the Olympic flame, many high-profile Olympians have proven that you can transform Olympic gold into a lasting career in the spotlight. Here are ten notable post-Olympics paths.

AFTER TV celeb, father of Kardashians

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Bruce Jenner Jenner’s website describes him as “the world’s greatest athlete,” a claim supported by his performance at the 1976 Olympics, where he won gold in the decathlon with a then-record score. A former Wheaties pitchman with several TV gigs on his resume, Jenner is best known these days as husband of Kris Jenner and stepfather to the Kardashian clan. Befitting his current spot in the celeb stratosphere he’ll be in London covering the 2012 Olympics for E!.

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ATHLETES

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AFTER Starred in Tarzan

Johnny Weissmuller Arriving in the United States by way of Ellis Island in 1905, Weissmuller first made his name in the water, winning five gold medals swimming for the US in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics. All told, he set 67 world records in the 1920s, and then made the leap from King of the Pool to King of the Jungle. In the 1930s and ‘40s, he found even greater fame on the silver screen, portraying Tarzan in upwards of 20 MGM films. ‘’It was like stealing,’’ he said of his role as Tarzan. ‘’There was swimming in it, and I didn’t have much to say. How can a guy climb trees, say ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane,’ and make a million?’’

OLYMPICS Swimming 1924, 1928

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Kerri Strug The image of the diminutive Strug balanced gingerly on her injured right leg, sticking the landing on the vault — and delivering the 1996 US Women’s gymnastic team all-around gold — ranks among the most iconic moments in US Olympics history. After retiring from the sport, Strug took a surprising path, enrolling in grad school and earning a Master’s in Sociology from Stanford. She worked as an elementary school teacher before moving to Washington to pursue a career in public service, working in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the U.S. Department of Justice.

She gave birth to her first child, Tyler, in March.

 OLYMPICS Gymnastics 1992, 1996  AFTER Pursuing career in public service

Peter Vidmar Vidmar won two gold medals as a gymnast in the 1984 games, and then took a somewhat logical post-Olympics path, becoming a motivational speaker. The prominent Mormon athlete kept himself in top physical shape and appeared in uniform as he spoke to corporate crowds about risk, originality and his Olympics experience. He was named chef de mission to the 2012 US Olympic team in 2011, but his mouth got him into trouble mere days after his appointment when he voiced his opposition to same-sex marriage. He summarily resigned the post and expressed regret that his personal views had become a distraction for the Olympic team.

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OLYMPICS Swimming 1992

Summer Sanders

 AFTER TV host

Sanders swam her way to stardom during the 1992 Summer Olympics, winning four medals (two gold) in Barcelona. After toweling off, she took perhaps the most natural trajectory for any athlete who emerges as an Olympic standout: she joined the media machine that had helped make her a star. A rare athlete who proved as at ease on camera as she was dynamic in competition, Sanders would become a regular presence on NBC’s Olympics coverage through the years, as well as the host of NBA Inside Stuff and a Nickelodeon game show.

 AFTER Republican Congressman

OLYMPICS Track & Field, 1968, 1972, 1976

Jim Ryun Ryun’s Olympic career was bittersweet: the middle-distance runner ran in three Olympics (1968, 1972 and 1976) but never won gold. He earned a silver medal in the 1500m race in 1968, blaming the Mexico City altitude for his second-place finish, and was tripped and fell during a qualifying heat in 1972.

The last American to hold the world record in the one-mile run, Ryun parlayed the nationalist fervor around the Olympics games into a new style of race: political campaigns. He served as a Republican congressman in the House of Representatives for more than a decade, representing Kansas’ 2nd District.

OLYMPICS Gymnastics 1984  AFTER Motivational speaker

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ATHLETES OLYMPICS Decathalon 1948, 1952

 AFTER Actor, senator

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: STAN WAYMAN//TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES; MICHAEL ROUGIER//TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES; SHANE BEVEL/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES; NED DISHMAN/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Bob Mathias What couldn’t Mathias do? The California native won the first of his gold medals in the decathlon as a teen sensation in the 1948 Games before becoming a standout college football player for Stanford. In 1952, he played in the Rose Bowl...and then went on to win decathlon gold #2 a few months later in Helsinki. Drafted into the NFL by the Washington Redskins, Mathias opted not to play professional football, instead serving in the Marines, working as America’s Good Will Ambassador, acting in movies and serving eight years in Congress. He’d later return to his Olympic roots, working as the director of the US Olympic Training Center.

OLYMPICS Basketball 1996, 2000, 2004

Sheryl Swoopes Swoopes was one of the preeminent faces of women’s basketball in the late 1990s and early 2000s, emerging as one of the success stories in the upstart WNBA and winning gold medals for the US team in the 1996, 2000 and 2004 summer Olympics.

Her life off the court proved just as newsworthy: in 2005 — the same year she won her third WNBA MVP award — she became one of the most high profile team-sport athletes to come out as gay, announcing that she was in a relationship with a female former assistant coach. By 2011, though, she was engaged to a man, disappointing some LGBT advocates — as well as an unsigned free agent after being dropped by her most recent team.

 AFTER WNBA star, LGBT lightning rod

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ATHLETES

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Jenny Thompson Thompson was one of the most decorated Olympians in history, amassing 12 medals (including eight golds) as a swimmer between 1992 and 2004. But the Stanford-educated New England native — who won all of her gold medals as part of relay teams — went back to school after retiring from the sport. She graduated from Columbia Medical School in 2006 and went on to a residency in anesthesiology in Boston. “It’s similar to racing because there are times when there is a lot of adrenaline,” she has said. She now practices in Maine, where she lives with her husband, and is expecting her first child this year.  OLYMPICS Swimming 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004

 AFTER Doctor

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HARRY HOW/GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF SPECTRUM MEDICAL GROUP; GETTY IMAGES; ALEX LIVESEY/GETTY IMAGES

Oscar De La Hoya Twenty years later, De La Hoya still trades on the nickname he earned boxing at the 1992 Olympics: The Golden Boy. After winning gold in the lightweight division in the Barcelona games, he went on to become one of the most accomplished professional fighters in history. Moving up in weight throughout his career, De La Hoya posted a 39-6-0 record and won 10 world titles over six divisions before retiring in 2009.

De La Hoya founded and runs Golden Boy Promotions, representing dozens of fighters.

He’s had his fair share of scandal as well, including a stint in rehab as well as stories (and photos) of drug-fueled cross-dressing in his private life hitting the tabloids.

OLYMPICS Boxing 1992

 AFTER Boxing champion, promoter

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GAMES

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The Game Is Up

THE OLYMPIC spirt has endured for ages, but the events that comprise the Games have not all showed such staying power. Here are several events that were once Olympic sports but have since fallen off the program. —Michael Klopman

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Tug of War Not just for summer camp, Tug of War was a staple of the Summer Olympics from 1900 through 1912 and appeared again in 1920. A combined team of tuggers from Denmark and Sweden took the first gold, but Great Britain became the sport’s powerhouse before it was permanently left out.

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GAMES

Bike Polo

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Exactly what it sounds like: polo on bicycles instead of horses. It appeared in the 1908 Olympics as a demonstration event, with Ireland defeating Germany 3-1 to win the gold.

Croquet Croquet’s only Olympic appearance in 1900 struggled to attract both fans and participants. Only seven men and three women competed and France won every medal.

It never appeared again.

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GAMES

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Softball

TOP TO BOTTOM: CLIVE ROSE/GETTY IMAGES; JONATHAN FERREY/GETTY IMAGES; PRESS ASSOCIATION VIA AP IMAGES

The sport only lasted for four Games — the U.S. won the first three, from 1996 to 2004, before losing to Japan in a stunning upset in 2008. The loss was keenly felt by the American women, who won’t be able to avenge their defeat in 2012 (and, unlike their baseballplaying male counterparts, don’t have access to lucrative professional leagues).

Baseball For all the talk of baseball being America’s pastime, MLB players sat out when it became an Olympic sport in 1992. Cuba became the dominant force in Olympic baseball, which only existed through 2008. Baseball will not be played in 2012.

Lacrosse An Olympic event in 1904 and 1908, lacrosse was dominated by the Canadian delegation during its short life. Despite no longer being a medal event, it has stuck around in an exhibition capacity.

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GAMES

Roque

ROGER VIOLLET COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES (POLO)

A hard-surface version of croquet, the sport — which got its name by dropping the “c” and the “t” from croquet — made its way onto the Olympic stage only once.

In 1904, four players — all Americans — competed in the roque tournament, which was a double round robin.

Massachusetts native Charles Jacobus took home gold with just five wins.

Polo Given the hassle of transporting polo horses around the globe, it may be more surprising that polo was included in five Olympics before World War II than that it eventually disappeared from the program.

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GAMES

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Pelota A hybrid racquet sport combining aspects of of racquetball and tennis, Pelota made it into the Olympics program just once.

Spain defeated France in the event’s only match in 1900.

Rugby The problem with Rugby at the Olympics was not attracting an audience — ­ it drew a large crowd in Paris in 1900 — but finding competitors.

The 1908 and 1920 Games featured only two participating teams. Team USA took home the last rugby gold medal in 1924 (out of a three-team field). The sport will be reinstated for 2016.

eWISE

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BY JACK MIRKINSON & CATHARINE SMITH

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of course, tape delays.

Yes, you will not be able to see many of the most popular events live, as NBC continues the tradition of hoarding its big-ticket items for primetime (where it can get the most eyeballs and advertising dollars) even after many people already know the outcome.

NBC’s answer has been to livestream every single event online. But there’s a catch: you have to be a cable or satellite subscriber to access the streams.

If not, you’re out of luck.

L

OOKING TO KEEP UP with the Olympics? Good luck.

With more than 5,500 hours of coverage across NBCUniversal’s various properties, staying up to date on all the happenings is a feat worthy of a medal in itself. Even harder? Avoiding the news in real time so you can enjoy the (tape-delayed) TV coverage later on.

Here’s our guide to watching — or avoiding — all the Olympics action.

THE OLD FASHIONED WAY NBCUniversal is using its portfolio to spread out its coverage. Tennis fan? Head to Bravo. Boxing enthusiast? CNBC. Badminton, wrestling or “long-form programming” junkie? You want MSNBC, which is eliminating nearly all of its daytime programming for the duration.

NBC’s approach will be largely unchanged from previous Olympics — though there will be quite a bit more coverage during the day than in years past. Executives at the network told The Associated Press that their primetime offerings will look a lot like the ones viewers have come to know — Bob Costas, swimming, track, stories of perseverance and, ILLUSTRATION BY JESSE LEFKOWITZ

AVOIDING SPOILERS Avoiding the results until you can watch the competition — or tuning the Games out altogether — is doable, but you’ve got your work cut out for you.

Twitter users who follow less than 100 accounts can temporarily unfollow sports or news accounts and should consider unfollowing tweeps who compulsively post updates about sporting events. You can do this right from Twitter.com, mobile apps or any third-

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eWISE

party Twitter clients you use.

If you follow 100 or more users, you can safeguard your Twitter stream on Twitter.com by downloading a filter tool that blocks keywords, phrases, hashtags and even Twitter handles. (Be sure, when setting up filters, that your keywords cover the sporting event, the team and the athletes you want blocked from your feed.) Some of your best options include the highly rated Tweet Filter for Google Chrome, or the slightly less powerful Larry Filter for Chrome and Firefox.

Robust apps like TweetDeck also feature filtering options, accessible via the app’s Settings dashboard. iPhone and iPad users can download the free Twitteriffic app to set up mobile filters. Android users can try the free Plume app.

Facebook doesn’t offer keyword filters like Twitter.com does, so you’ll have to download third-party software.

Social Fixer is a free browser extension offering oodles of options that keep your news feed clear of certain stories or updates from certain people.

Caveat: filtering your social networks is a pain. At the end of the day, no matter how badly you want to block out the Olympics, you’ll be overjoyed when you can finally remove these self-imposed censors. But even if the experience is miserable, at least you’ll know how to create a safe zone the next time you miss a Game of Thrones episode.

Have a question about electronic etiquette?

Email ewise@huffingtonpost.com.

FOLLOWING THE GAMES ON THE GO

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not, here are r o V T a n w o Whether you tay in the Olympics loop s 5 easy ways to er where you are. no matt

NBC Olympics Real-time news, updates, schedules, results, TV and online listings, video recaps and more.

NBC “Live Extra App” Offers livestreams and video replays, for subscribers only.

London2012.com The official London 2012 site will offer a livestream of the Torch Relay on July 27.

Twitter Follow @Olympics for real-time 140-character updates and snippets of media content.

Reuters Offers the best of hi-res Reuters photography. A virtual front row seat to all the action.

Being a member of Team USA... comes with a responsibility to give back.”

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GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK

Anjali Forber-Pratt

Dreamer, Driver, Doer

BY CHRIS GREENBERG

“BYE, MOM. We’re going on an adventure.”

Ian Forber-Pratt always made sure that his younger sister, Anjali, joined him on whatever suburban excursion he had dreamed up. Twenty years later, one sibling adventure still looms large: climbing the 55-foot pine tree in their backyard. As Ian helped his sister make her ascent,her wheelchair PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERIC LUBRICK

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IAN FORBER

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— and all the limitations that she may have then associated with it — shrank beneath them.

“My mom was inside doing dishes and she looked outside and realized that her daughter was 50ft up in a pine tree,” recalled Anjali during a recent conversation with Huffington. “But instead of her stopping and her freaking out and saying, ‘No, no, no you have to come straight down you’re going to get hurt,’ she let it play out. She let me be a kid and I think that is one experience that really kind of shaped my can-do attitude.”

GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK

Thanks in large part to that cando attitude instilled in her at an early age, Forber-Pratt will be representing the United States at the Paralympics in London. An elite wheelchair racer, Forber-Pratt’s accomplishments are not limited just to the track. Earning a Ph.D. in Human Resource Education in 2012 to go along with the world record she set in the 200-meter race at the Swiss Nationals in 2011, the 28-year-old boasts one of the most impressive resumes of anyone competing in London this summer.

THE EARLY STRUGGLE Born in Calcutta in 1984, Anjali spent the first two and a half

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Indian children help Forber-Pratt navigate the streets of Rajasthan.

She was born in Calcutta in 1984.

Exit months of her life in an orphanage before being adopted and brought to the United States. Just two months after moving to Natick, Mass., Anjali fell seriously ill. Diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder causing inflammation of the spinal cord, she became paralyzed from the waist down. With the support of her adoptive parents and her siblings — she also has a younger sister and brother — Anjali has come farther than many people outside of her family ever thought she could.

“I was Indian. I was in a wheelchair. There were lots of times in my life when, unfortunately, I did come face to face with naysayers or people who doubted my abilities,” recalls Forber-Pratt, who filed a lawsuit against her high school at age 14 in order to guarantee access for students with disabilities. “I knew that it wasn’t going to necessarily benefit me, but what I experienced and what I was feeling was not right and it needed to change. And I needed to be that pioneer.”

ANOTHER PIONEER On a Monday morning in April, the last place that 5-year-old Anjali wanted to be was sta-

GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK

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tioned at the 8-mile mark of the Boston Marathon.

“I had never seen anything like it,” Forber-Pratt recalls of seeing wheelchair racers — including her would-be idol, Jean Driscoll — whizzing by at 25 miles per hour.

In third grade, Forber-Pratt wrote a story entitled “When I Meet Jean Driscoll.” Eventually, she’d

I started realizing that just because I have a disability doesn’t mean I couldn’t go to college, have a family, get a job, do all these different things.” forge a close relationship with the legendary wheelchair racer who won five gold medals, three silver and four bronze over three trips to the Paralympics.

“They were all wearing Illinois jerseys and so I started realizing that just because I have a disability doesn’t mean I couldn’t go to college, have a family, get a job, do all these different things,” ForberPratt recalls of that first time she saw Driscoll and the other wheelchair racers at the Boston Marathon. “From that point on, I was bothering my parents because I

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GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK

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really wanted to have one of those super fancy shiny race chairs because I really wanted to try it – and everything.”

“EVERYTHING” Forber-Pratt made an earnest attempt at “everything” as she grew up, taking up competitive skiing in high school after a wheelchair racing crash left her with two broken wrists. She first made an impression at the 1993 Junior National Wheelchair Games, winning two gold medals, two silvers and a bronze.

“That opened my eyes to the possibility that sport can take you places,” Forber-Pratt reflected.

After establishing herself as a dominant force at the Junior level, Forber-Pratt made her Paralympics debut in 2008, winning bronze in the 400 meters as well as the Women’s 4 x 100m relay in Beijing.

When not training, ForberPratt is a public speaker and advocate for Paralympic athletics.

With her motto “Dream, drive, do,” she attempts to lift others just as her brother helped her when it came to climbing that pine tree so many years ago.

“I’ve always believed in service to others. I’ve always, always,

What I was feeling was not right... and I needed to be that pioneer.” always believed in the power of having role models and helping to educate others,” says ForberPratt. “Having athletic success creates a platform to do that in a much bigger way. I think that being a member of Team USA — wearing USA across my chest — comes with a responsibility to give back to others.”

Forber-Pratt trains in Champaign, Ill. She’ll be competing in wheelchair racing in the Paralympics in London.

TFU

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1904

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POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES (RUNNERS); AP PHOTO (THORPE); KEYSTONE/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES (JENSEN); BETTMANN/CORBIS / AP IMAGES (SOVIET “SISTERS”); COLORSPORT/CORBIS /APIMAGES (SUDHAUS)

US Marathoner Hitches Ride To Finish Line

1929

“Greatest Athlete In World” Jim Thorpe Stripped Of Medals For Playing Semi-Pro Baseball

1960 DANISH

CYCLIST KNUD ENEMARK COLLAPSES DURING RACE… REVEALED TO BE DOPING

1966

Soviet “Sisters” Tamara & Irina Press Maybe Men, Stop Competing When Gender Testing Introduced

German Student Breaks Into Mens Marathon For Homestretch, Pretends To Win

1972

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TFU

1976

BETTMANN/CORBIS (ONISHCHENKO); AP PHOTO/JOHN GAPS III (BARKLEY); RONALD C. MODRA/SPORTS IMAGERY/GETTY IMAGES (JONES); BOB THOMAS/GETTY IMAGES (JOHNSON); AP PHOTO/JULIE JACOBSON (KEXIN)

Soviet Pentathlete Busted For Using Rigged Electric Epee

1988

Judging Scandal Robs Roy Jones Jr. Of Light Middleweight Boxing Gold

1988

CANADIAN SPRINTER STRIPPED OF GOLD MEDAL, WORLD RECORD AFTER FAILING DRUG TEST

1992

Charles Barkley Elbows Angolan Player, Almost Sparks International Incident

20 08

Chinese Women’s Gymnastic Team Accused Of Using Underage Girls

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