At the 2024 Paris Olympics, which will be held for the third time in history, women's participation in the Olympics will be in full swing.
The first Olympic Games were held in Paris in 1900, and for the first time women were allowed to participate in the Olympics. At the 1900 Olympics, she was 22 women out of a total of 997 competitors.
The 2024 Paris Games will be the first Olympic Games to achieve full gender equality. Of the 10,500 athletes participating in the tournament, 5,250 will be men and 5,250 will be women. The 2020 Tokyo Games was the most gender-balanced Games ever, with 47.8% of all athletes being women. At the 1964 Tokyo Games, only 13% of all athletes were women.
Team USA similarly continues its rise in gender equality due to the influence of Title IX, which became law in 1972. Since 1972, Team USA has seen a 310% increase in female participation on its U.S. Summer Olympic roster. In 1972, 38 college female athletes were on the U.S. Olympic team roster. In the 2020 tournament, that number was 112 schools.
As opportunities for women in college sports continue to grow, so too does the college pipeline to Team USA. Read more about her NCAA Women's Olympic roster below.
Most decorated NCAA athletes
The most decorated women on Team USA, Jenny Thompson, Dara Torres and Natalie Coughlin, have two things in common. That said, all of them have won 12 Olympic medals in swimming, and all of them swam in college.
Of all the women in the NCAA, Thompson, a Stanford graduate, won the most gold medals with Team USA. Thompson won eight gold medals, three silver medals, and one bronze medal in four Olympics. Thompson won the NCAA individual title and relay title 19 times during her time at Stanford, and from 1992 to 1995 she led her team to four consecutive NCAA championships. .
Torres, a Florida State graduate, won four gold medals, four silver medals and four bronze medals in five Olympics. In 2008, Torres became the oldest swimmer to earn a spot on her U.S. Olympic team at age 41. At the Florida Games, she won 28 All-American championships.
Coughlin spent three years in collegiate swimming at California before beginning an Olympic career that included three gold medals, four silver medals, and five bronze medals. During her college years, she won 11 NCAA individual titles and also won one relay title.
From NCAA to Team USA
In the 2020 Olympics, 70% of Team USA's female athletes (233 of 331) were in the NCAA, marking an upward trend in female participation. The 2012 London Games marked the first time that the entire U.S. Olympic team had more women than men (six more). At the Rio de Janeiro Games, there were 27 more women than men on the U.S. Olympic team, and at the Tokyo Games, that number was nearly double, with 51 more women than men. Her 181 NCAA-affiliated women competed on Team USA at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. That number rose to 212 at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 215 at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
powerful pipeline
Want to know which school has produced the most female Olympians on the U.S. team? Since 2000, UCLA has topped the list with 66 athletes, followed by Stanford University (61 athletes) and the University of North Carolina ( 40 athletes) followed.
keep 100
While collegiate sports are a major pipeline for many women's sports, NCAA-affiliated athletes are represented on the eight Team USA rosters in Tokyo (water polo, indoor volleyball, beach volleyball, softball, rowing, basketball, 3×3 Basketball, diving) accounted for 100%.
In particular, the U.S. team won gold medals in women's water polo, basketball, indoor volleyball, 3×3 basketball, and beach volleyball (April Ross and Alix Kleinman) at the Tokyo Games. The U.S. team also won a silver medal in softball, and former Nevada standout Krista Palmer won a bronze medal in the 3-meter diving event.
gold standard
South Carolina women's basketball head coach Dawn Staley is legendary for what she accomplished in the college game as both a coach and a player, but her accomplishments with Team USA are equally impressive. Staley becomes the second woman in history to win a gold medal with Team USA as a player, assistant coach and head coach, joining former Old Dominion player Anne Donovan. On the court, Staley won gold medals in 1996, 2000 and 2004, and at the 2020 Tokyo Games, she led USA to a gold medal. She also served as an assistant when the U.S. won gold medals in 2008 and 2016.
At the collegiate level, Staley won two NCAA titles alongside the University of South Carolina, and the undefeated 2024 team entered the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 overall seed.
