Women dominate Team USA medal count at Beijing Winter Olympics | TheHill – The Hill

Another historic Olympics went down during the coronavirus pandemic, especially as female athletes drove Team USAs medal count.

Out of the 25 medals Team USA racked up, 17 were earned by women, the most by any other competing nation, with 13 coming from womens events and four from mixed-gender events.

American snowboarding icon Chole Kim returned to the halfpipe and won gold in Beijing, becoming the youngest athlete to do so at 21 years old. She made her Olympic debut during the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics and then took a year off from competition to attend her first year of college at Princeton University

Lindsey Jacobellis, at the age of 36, also won gold at the womens snowboard cross event while becoming the oldest snowboarder to medal at the Olympics. It was her fifth time competing at the games, where she also helped Team USA bring home gold in the mixed team aerials.

Kaillie Humphries and Elana Meyers Taylor also brought home gold and silver medals in the inaugural monobob event, one of seven new events at the Beijing Winter Olympics that entails an individual version of bobsleigh.

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Meyers Taylor also became the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Olympics history with five medals. Along with her silver medal in the monobob event, she won bronze for Team USA during the 2020 Vancouver Winter Olympics, silver medals at the Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018 Olympics.

The Olympics havent historically been a gender-inclusive space, with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) noting in its Gender Equality & Inclusion Report 2021 that since the first Olympic Games in which women were allowed to compete in 1900, only 2 percent of participating athletes were women.

That percentage has increased with the London 2012 Olympics marking the first games with women competing in every sport on the program and accounted for 44 percent of Olympic athletes participating. The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics had women accounting for a record 45 percent of athletes.

The U.S. didnt win the most medals out of all nations competing at this years Olympics, Norway achieved 37 total medals, the Russian Olympic Committee earned 32 and Germany edged out Team USA with 27 medals.

Despite the gains in gender representation at the Beijing Olympics, the games didnt go down without controversy. Kamila Valieva, a 15-year-old Russian figure skater,tested positive for a banned drug ahead of competition and caused the team figure skating event to not hold its traditional public medal ceremony.

China also came under fire for its dismal human rights record against the Uyghur Muslim minority, while activists warned that Olympic athletes participating in Beijing should not speak out against China as they could be prosecuted.

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Women dominate Team USA medal count at Beijing Winter Olympics | TheHill - The Hill