Amna Nawaz:
It was a strong finish for Team USA at the Milano Cortina Games, as they brought home the most gold medals for the country in a single Winter Olympics. The U.S. men’s hockey win over Canada wrapped up the games in dramatic fashion, as the team’s first gold since 1980.
For more on that and some signal achievements from these Games, I spoke earlier today with Christine Brennan of USA Today, who joined us from Milan.
Christine, it’s great to see you.
Christine Brennan, USA Today:
Amna, my pleasure. Thank you.
Amna Nawaz:
OK, so a record number of winter golds there with Team USA in skating, skiing and more, but let’s start with those hockey wins. Both the men’s and women’s teams had to go into overtime to beat their archrivals, Canada.
I think the iconic image from the men’s game may be this, Jack Hughes with a big smile, missing a few teeth after that game as well. What did that win mean for the team and for the country?
Christine Brennan:
Amna, for the men’s team, was the first gold medal in 46 years, since 1980, the Miracle on Ice.
And, in fact, what they call the Winter House, the party area afterwards, all the players, the men’s players, were there. And they were lifting Mike Eruzione, the captain of that 1980 team, and screaming “Miracle, miracle, miracle” as they celebrated into the night in Milan. So the tie-in there was extraordinary, even though the parallels are completely different.
There are no parallels, in the sense that was a bunch of amateurs and college kids beating the Big Red Machine, the Soviet Union, in 1980. This is an all-star team, the Americans, the Canadians, others that are NHL players who know each other very well, obviously competing for their nations, but a great moment for men’s hockey following, of course, the great success of the women’s team, which has won three gold medals during that same time period and continued their great play, of course, here as well.
Amna Nawaz:
Let’s turn now to figure skating, where I know you have been focusing a lot of your reporting.
And Alysa Liu, you told us going into these Games she would be one to watch. Where does her individual gold place her in Olympics history?
Christine Brennan:
It’s right up there. She’s in one of the most exclusive clubs in all of sports, U.S. women who have won that figure skating gold medal. And the names are iconic, Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming, Kristi Yamaguchi, only a few more, and now Alysa Liu, one of my favorite stories of the Games, one of my favorite stories I have covered the last few years on, actually.
She won the title at 13, won the national title at 14. Fed up with people telling her what to do and having no life other than skating, she retired at 16. She unretired at 18, she won the world title at 19, and now she’s won the Olympic gold medal at 20. I have never seen someone smile more under pressure, and we know what watching skating, watching Ilia Malinin have such trouble, the pressure is enormous here at these Olympic Games. Nothing like it.
And Alysa Liu smiled throughout the four minutes. She talked about, if she won a medal, great if she didn’t, no big deal. She had the perfect attitude, and she also was cheering on her competitors all the way through, the Japanese women who could beat her, the Americans at the nationals, and also here, just a terrific statement by this young athlete, this young skater, this great young American about women supporting women, about having fun and about keeping everything in perspective.
Keep an eye on Alysa Liu. She’s going to be doing a lot of interesting things, not just skating, but off the ice as well, in the future.
Amna Nawaz:
And such a joy to watch as well.
Well, speaking of women in sports, you wrote a column I want to point to, and you called it “Title IX as responsible for so many women’s Olympic medals for Team USA.” Tell us about that. Where did we see that in these Games?
Christine Brennan:
Oh, throughout the Games.
And for the third straight Winter Olympics, the U.S. women won more gold medals and more overall medals than the U.S. men. And just to also kind of put this in perspective, it is now four Summer Olympics in a row, four of them going back to London in 2012, where the U.S. women have won more gold medals and more total medals than the U.S. men.
This is an extraordinary story. This is the story of Title IX signed by Richard Nixon in June of 1972, as you know, Amna, very well, opening the floodgates for girls and women to play sports in this country, especially team sports. If there’s no Title IX, we have never heard of the U.S. women’s hockey team. If there’s no Title IX, we have never heard of the U.S. women’s soccer team or softball at the Summer Olympics.
It is that big a deal. And every other nation knows that the U.S. has an incredible head start because we decided we cared about our daughters playing sports, as well as our sons, back in the ’70s, obviously all the way through the rest of this century, into this century. What we’re seeing in NCAA women’s basketball and the WNBA and throughout college sports, we are seeing it here at the Olympic Games, where the U.S. women are the reason that the United States Olympic team is performing so well one Olympics after another.
Amna Nawaz:
That is sports columnist Christine Brennan of USA Today joining us after weeks of covering these Winter Olympic Games in Milan.
Christine, thank you so much. Always great to talk to you.
Christine Brennan:
Oh, it’s fun. Amna, thank you.
