ABSTRACT
The year is 2002 and the country is the United States of America, and in Women and Sport classes all across the nation, students are discussing the new ‘firsts’ from the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah: the first African-American woman to win a Winter Olympic Games gold medal in a first-time competition for women, bobsledding. Why should race and gender continue to dominate any sporting discussion at the beginning of the twenty-first century? The answer is necessarily bifurcated. Although participation rates and media coverage of American women’s sports have reached an all-time high, leadership opportunities for women are still relatively rare and girl’s and women’s participation opportunities do not mirror those of men.
