RIO DE JANEIRO -- All four of the Olympians with the closest ties to the Pittsburgh area are women: Bloomfield's Amanda Polk in rowing, Gibsonia's Meghan Klingenberg in soccer, Mt. Lebanon's Leah Smith in swimming, and Hopewell's Christa Dietzen in volleyball.
And the first gold of these Games went to West Virginia University's Ginny Thrasher in rifle.
Big deal, right?
Well, yeah, exactly. If anything, the surprise would be if it were the reverse.
Of the U.S. delegation of 549 athletes, the largest of any country, an Olympic-record 292 are women. That's 53 percent of the delegation. What's more, the women are currently projected to win an even higher percentage of the overall American medal haul. That includes basketball, where the U.S. has won six of the past seven golds, and soccer, where the U.S. has won four of the five tournaments since they began in 1996. And on this very Tuesday night, the gymnastics team, led by the great Simone Biles, took gold while the men finished fifth.
This isn't an accident, of course. It's been 44 years since the NCAA passed the famous Title IX resolution that committed colleges to equal opportunities for male and female students, and it's still having a colossal impact on global athletics. For all the controversy it kicked up at the time -- especially when all-male sports like wrestling were getting slashed to comply -- it put the U.S. so far ahead of the rest of the world in training women at an elite level that it likely will take everyone else another generation or two to catch up. Even now, a good number of the most competitive women from other countries train at U.S. colleges.
"We got a great head start in the U.S. because of the support they had in their schools and their colleges growing up," Scott Blackmun, CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said at the Main Press Centre at these Games' opening. "You look at 10, 15 years after the passage of Title IX, how great an impact that started having. You combine it with the collegiate structure we have, and that helps define the success."
Given that women's professional leagues are barely viable in the U.S., with only basketball, soccer and hockey even trying, the Olympics remain the ultimate goal for our society's better half.
It's something to think about, I dare say, when anyone curmudgeonly states that Olympics don't matter anymore. They matter more than ever to women.
• Only Olympic sport where women compete against men?
It's equestrian.
But there's at least some sentiment within the community of shooting sports to go that route, based on the obvious element that size, strength and the other separations between the genders really don't apply. It's mostly, as Thrasher was saying after her gold, a matter of mental toughness and a steady hand.
Thrasher's position on this: "Honestly, I like it the way it is because you have more medals and more chances for people to be rewarded for their achievements. I think it's better for the sport."
Hm. I'm not about to argue with a young lady bearing a rifle, but maybe there would be even more attention paid to shooting if excellent performers such as Thrasher could take down the best of the men.
• Wait, so the IOC should only award Olympics to wealthy cities? That's fair?
• Michael Phelps vs. Usain Bolt is a legit debate, especially among the non-partisan in the conversation, but there's zero competition when it comes to popularity in Brazil. Bolt is all over TV commercials, billboards, you name it, everywhere you look. Even the Associated Press is calling Bolt "the biggest figure at these Games."
In general, there's so much glamour attached to track worldwide that's been missing in the U.S. for far too long. Maybe Allyson Felix will help change that when she kicks some tail in the women's 400 and 4x400 relay next week.
• People still describe the NBA guys here as 'Dream Team,' though that designation really should have been a one-and-done with the 1992 Barcelona group that had Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and ... what, you need more? OK, Karl Malone and John Stockton came off the bench. They won their six games by 79, 44, 60, 41, 38 and 47 points. They had a 46-1 run against Angola, which also had to eat a Charles Barkley elbow.
How about we retire 'Dream Team' once and for all?
We'll never see its like again, not in an Olympics, not in any sport.
Unless American football ever becomes part of this. Oh, my.
• If Muhammad Ali could light the torch in Atlanta, Pele could have done it here, based not so much on his own people's vague description of having "muscle pain," but much more on his previous complaints about having "sponsorship" issues.
If the latter is the real reason he declined one of the planet's greatest honors, the Brazilians should politely decline his latest offer to participate in the Closing Ceremony.
• Faster, stronger, higher has its limits. Just as the ambitiously configured luge course in Vancouver cost a racer his life, so, too, have gymnastics gone too far with a scoring system that rewards daring, dangerous maneuvers -- degree of difficulty, they call it -- more than simple execution of established ones.
This became a hot topic here with the horrific double-break of French gymnast Samir Ait Said during a vault landing, but it shouldn't stop. Gymnastics are a sport primarily for children, and it's beyond the pale to think anyone anywhere should be endangering kids for sport.
Also, take the term 'figure skating' and replace 'gymnastics' above to make equal sense.
• Memo to NBC on behalf of everyone suffering back home with what's being described as more of the usual horrendous tape-delay coverage: The Olympics are a sporting event. Sporting events, like all of the others your network broadcasts, are shown live.
Maybe the 35 percent decline in viewership for the Opening Ceremony -- as compared to London, the most recent Summer Games -- will wake up someone to this.
But maybe not.
• Brazil's Globo network does it right: There are five channels, all dedicated to the Olympics. There's a main channel that kind of serves as the home base, four others that rotate through tons of live events. It's mesmerizing. Always something on. Always a certainty that you'll see what you want. No pianos and violins and fluffy features. Just actual sports.
• Hope Solo has done and spoken some really lousy things in her life, but have we ever had as a nation a more dominant female athlete in a team sport?
I'm not talking about that bad late goal Tuesday night against Colombia, obviously. Just in general. Her presence on the pitch is positively overwhelming.
• Between Polk, Klingenberg and Dietzen, plus possibly Smith, the Pittsburgh area has a really good chance for three golds and a silver. Which would be an amazing haul for our city.
Women matter, right?