An Olympic gold medal is always a big deal, but some are the culmination of extra special journeys. 

The gold medal quests of Cat Osterman, Stephanie Gilmore, and Dawn Staley are three such cases. The best pitcher of all-time is coming out of retirement for Olympic redemption. A seven-time world surf champion will have a chance to win the first ever gold medal in her sport. And for the very first time, a Black woman will serve as the head coach of the USA Women’s Basketball team. 

The six grams of gold plating on pure silver might be the physical constitution of a gold medal. But it’s the unique story of human pursuit of excellence that we truly value. And these are three of the best stories heading into Tokyo.

Cat Osterman, Softball 

Cat Osterman has a solid claim to being the greatest softball pitcher of all time. She won a gold medal as the youngest player on Team USA in 2004, leading the team in strikeouts. She graduated from The University of Texas in 2006 as a three-time National Player of the Year, four-time All-American, and two-time ESPY Award winner. She still holds the NCAA record for highest career strike-out-per-seven-inning ratio at 14.34, as well as UT records for total victories, ERA, shut-outs, and no-hitters. 

When she retired from the National Pro Fastpitch league in 2015, she was a three-time Pitcher of the Year, four-time champion, and six-time All-NPF Team selection. Last summer, playing in the inaugural Athletes Unlimited softball season, Osterman won the league’s individual title after accumulating the most player points over the course of the season. 

Osterman officially retired once from softball — in 2015. She was back on the mound for Athletes Unlimited because the southpaw pitcher has some serious unfinished Olympic business to attend to.

Ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the IOC announced it would be removing baseball and softball from the Olympics after Beijing. Osterman was gutted. She was by far the best up-and-coming softball pitcher in the country, if not the world. Her counterpart on the baseball side likely had a decade-long, multimillion-dollar MLB career to look forward to, but Olympic glory once every four years was the highest stage Osterman could hope to play on. 

In the gold medal match in Beijing, Osterman came out after five innings with the U.S. trailing 2-1. Twice, the U.S. couldn’t capitalize on a one-out, bases loaded opportunity, and a wild throw home allowed Japan to score a third run in the top of the seventh. The U.S. went scoreless to finish the inning and Japan erupted into the exuberant elation of having won Olympic gold while handing the U.S. their first Olympic loss in eight years and their first non-gold medal in Olympic softball since 1996. 

For Osterman, it was the only two runs and only loss she’d allowed on the Olympic stage. The salt in the wound was knowing there would be no chance for redemption.

But when she found out a decade later that softball would be reinstated for 2020, Osterman shook off the dust, got back on the mound, and quickly proved that even in her late 30s, even as the oldest player on the roster for Tokyo, she is still one of the very best. Thirteen years later, we now have the chance to watch the sport’s greatest pitcher complete a 13-year redemption story. 

Stephanie Gilmore, Surfing

In 2007, at 19 years of age, Stephanie Gilmore won surfing’s World Title in her debut season on the World Surfing League tour. No man or woman had ever won the championship in their rookie season, and Gilmore went on to add three more consecutive World Titles, making it four in a row for the young superstar. 

Over the last decade, she has added three more to her trophy case, tying her with legend Layne Beachley for the most women’s World Titles in history. 

When speaking to Kelley O’Hara on the Just Women’s Sport podcast last winter, she said the most rewarding title of her career was the fifth, which she won in 2012. The reason? It was the first title she won after being physically assaulted by a stranger outside her home. 

Gilmore had been walking back to her apartment after plans to see a movie with a friend fell through. As she approached the stairs to her building, a stranger ran up behind her and hit her twice with a metal bar. The first blow was to her head, and she immediately saw blood everywhere. The second broke the wrist of the arm she had raised to shield herself.

While the physical injuries healed quickly, the emotional trauma was much harder to recover from, and her performance showed it when she finished 11th in 2011. After spending the first years of her career known on tour as “Happy Gilmore,” she had to discover a grittier, angrier drive to win after her confidence was so deeply rattled. Once she tapped into this more primal, competitive instinct, she got back to winning and earned her fifth and most hard-fought championship in 2012.

Now heading into Tokyo to compete in surfing’s Olympic debut, that fighter mentality will serve her well. Countries are limited to sending two men and two women to compete in Tokyo, but Australia currently has five surfers ranked in the top ten on the women’s side. The unavoidable shuffle in rankings since qualification ended in 2019 has led some critics to question whether she deserves the spot. Winning surfing’s inaugural gold medal this summer would not only add a historic achievement to a hall of fame career, it would also silence the doubters like nothing else could.

Dawn Staley, Basketball

Dawn Staley has been head coach of the USA Basketball Women’s National Team since 2018, when she led the squad on an undefeated path to the gold medal at the 2018 FIBA World Cup, qualifying for Tokyo 2020. But her winning record with USA Basketball isn’t the most useful barometer of what she brings to the table, given the team has a 114-3 record at the World Cup and Olympic-level since 1990. 

The absolute domination of the U.S. women in international basketball is something we’ve come to lazily expect while offering little congrats in return. But Staley is still in a league of her own. She’s the first person to ever be both USA Basketball’s Player of the Year (1994, 2000) and  Coach of the Year (2018). Scrolling further down her resume are two Naismith College Player of the Year Awards, six WNBA All-Star Awards, AP National Coach of the Year (2020), Naismith Coach of the Year (2020), and an NCAA DI Championship with her South Caroline Gamecocks in 2017. 

Simply put, Dawn Staley is a boss. But championships and accolades aside, Staley’s tenure at the helm of this team holds deeper significance: she is the first Black person to hold this role, and it’s not something she takes lightly.

“Nowadays, we’re hearing a lot of ‘firsts,’” she told Gamecocks Online. “Whether it’s two black coaches at a NCAA Final Four, or two black coaches competing at a SEC Championship. Now, a black coach being the head coach of an Olympic team. I know some people are like, if you can coach, you can coach. That’s true, but when it’s a first, and when it’s history-making, I think it’s something to be proud of. It also allows other doors to be opened and opportunities for black coaches to hold these positions.”

For Staley, the importance lies in what her identity signifies to her athletes. About 50% of all NCAA Division I women’s basketball student-athletes are Black (which has been the case for at least a decade). On the professional level, about 70% of WNBA players are Black. 

“There just weren’t a lot of options for me to play for someone who looked like me. Who fundamentally understood me,” she wrote in The Players Tribune in 2018. “I do think young black women have to understand how to navigate through life as a black woman. A lot of the girls playing basketball now — their paths to success are probably similar to mine.” 

If Coach Staley can lead Team USA to their seventh Olympics title in a row in Tokyo, the impact her visibility could have on the next generation could be worth more than any gold medal. 

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.