Among the small handful of warm memories from the Atlanta Olympics, Dawn Staley stands out. Her combination of gnarly competitiveness and glorious skills – a repertoire of feints, no-look passes and behind-the-back smuggles (her “signature play”, she said) – made the little point guard of the USA women’s basketball team a compelling figure as she and her colleagues swept to victory.
At the time she was a woman playing what many still saw as a man’s game. In later years I was reminded of her playmaking skills while watching Marta, the great No10 of the Brazil women’s football team, and of her focused aggression when Nicole Adams became the first woman to win a gold medal in the Olympic boxing tournament.
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