Wrapping up its second year on track (its 2020 season having been cancelled due to Covid-19), the W Series is headed to the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas on October 23-24 for a double-header race event. Best of all, the two preseason favorites, Alice Powell and Jamie Chadwick, are tied in points for the championship. 

Below is a primer on the W Series, an overview on how it’s breaking ground for women in racing, and what to expect in this suspense-filled season finale.

Why the W Series?

Motorsport is one of the hardest sporting arenas to break into if one’s path isn’t well paved by family legacy and financial backing. It has been dubbed by critics as the “billionaires boy’s club,” which partially explains what has made Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 career so compelling. The irrefutable GOAT of F1, and the only Black F1 driver ever, Hamilton broke into the sport as an outsider while his father worked multiple jobs and provided the mechanical work to support his son’s natural gift for racing. 

The number of women who’ve successfully broken into the ranks is similarly few and far between. Out of 900+ Formula 1 drivers who’ve ever lined up on the grid for a Grand Prix event, only two of them have been women (Maria Teresa de Filippis in 1958 and Lella Lombardi in 1975 and 1976). For Catherine Bond Muir, a British lawyer and corporate financial advisor, those numbers were so bleak, she felt compelled to take matters into her own hands by founding the W Series, an international all-female driver racing league.

Some don’t like the idea of a segregated series for women and believe efforts should be focused on bringing more women up through the standard pathways of racing. Pippa Mann, a British IndyCar race driver, has argued, “We [women] grew up dreaming of winning races, and winning championships, against everyone—the same as every male racer does. We did not grow up dreaming of being segregated, and winning the girl’s only cup.”

For Bond Muir, the fact that the number of women in single-seater motor-racing series globally was on a downward trend convinced her that the existing pathways for women weren’t working. In a sport where individual sponsorship is fundamental, there is a dismal number of companies willing to spend big money on female drivers who are as yet unproven against male drivers on the biggest stage. And without preemptive funding, the opportunity to go out and prove themselves doesn’t exist for these drivers. 

This is where the W Series comes in. With a structure that covers all expenses for drivers, the financial barriers into the sport are made null and void, allowing the W Series to showcase the best female drivers from all over the globe, racing some of the fastest machines on the most iconic racetracks.

The W Series Structure

Unlike Formula 1, where a driver’s individual financial sponsorships are a major factor in being selected for one of the coveted 20 driver seats, the athletes in the W Series are selected solely on their racing ability. Applicants are put through rigorous on-track testing, simulator assessments, technical engineering and fitness evaluations, and then the top 18 make the cut. 

Another critical difference from F1 is that every driver in the W Series competes in an identical race car (the Tatuus T-318 Formula 3 car). In F1, there are certain parameters for the vehicles, but the ten teams are allowed to customize much of the car, which results in the wealthiest teams dominating for years on end as they pour money into either buying or creating the latest and greatest technology.

During this second season of the W series, even though they are in identical vehicles, the drivers are divided into nine teams sponsored by partner companies. A team championship based on overall points accumulated by each team’s two drivers will be debuted in 2022. Currently, there is a $1.5 million allotment for the individual driver championship. The overall winner will be awarded $500K with the remainder trickling down from second to eighteenth place. 

Another new aspect for this 2021 season is that all eight races are being held alongside Formula 1 Grand Prix events, giving these women the grandest of stages to showcase their abilities.  

The 2021 W Series Championship

With six of eight total races completed, the top two drivers, Alice Powell and Jamie Chadwick, are deadlocked in points at 109 apiece (a 1st place finish is worth 25 points, 2nd gets 18, 3rd gets 15, and so on). The two Brits have been neck and neck throughout the series, trading the top podium back and forth with only one other driver, Emma Kimilainen of Finland, snatching a single race win in between. 

Twenty-four-year-old Chadwick is the reigning W Series champion from 2019 and has been a steadily rising star, coming up through karting and junior racing programs in the UK and then moving on the Formula 3 series in both her home country and Asia. During the inaugural W Series season, she was also named a Williams development driver for the F1 team.

Powell’s path to competitive racing has been a bit more stop and go depending on when funding has been available. After several years competing in Formula Renault series in the UK and abroad, Powell (28) had been out of competitive racing since 2015 and was doing building renovation work for her father when the W Series opportunity arose. 

“Racing has been the sport of privileged billionaires for years and it’s hard for women to get sponsorship. Despite writing hundreds of letters to businesses and race teams my funding dried up in 2015,” she once vented. “Then W Series came along and changed the game. I had just been unblocking a urinal when I got the call.”

With three 1st-place finishes to Chadwick’s two, Powell currently has the upper hand to edge out Chadwick for the overall title if things remain equal after the final two races. With 50 first place points up for grabs between the final two races, Kimilainen is also still within striking distance of a come from behind victory. And in racing it doesn’t take much—a tire puncture, engine issue, rainy weather—to drastically change the fate of title contenders.

For Bond Muir, she couldn’t have hoped for more as her brainchild heads into a suspenseful finish of its sophomore season: back-to-back races at the Circuit of the Americas to determine who walks away the champion. 

“If you had told me then that we would stage two races on the same weekend at one of F1’s flagship events in just our second season, I would have pinched myself,” Bond Muir said. 

“It will be a fitting way to end our breathless and action-packed eight-race season and promises to be a very special weekend as we celebrate everything that W Series stands for and the giant strides we have made since launching three years ago.”

It didn’t take long for the Taliban to indicate women’s sports will once again be banned now that the regime has regained total control of Afghanistan. Earlier this month, Ahmadullah Wasiq, the deputy head of the Taliban’s cultural commission, told Australian broadcaster SBS, “Islam and the Islamic Emirate [Afghanistan] do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed.” 

The fact that the Afghan women’s cricket team and all other women’s national teams play in full length attire with hijabs is not sufficient for the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam. 

“In cricket, they might face a situation where their face and body will not be covered. Islam does not allow women to be seen like this.” 

But it’s more than just the risk of skin exposure and inappropriate attire that the Taliban have issue with. “It is the media era, and there will be photos and videos, and then people watch it,” Wasiq stated, indicating any type of public viewership or consumption of women’s sports is equally problematic for the extreme Islamist group.

It’s been 20 years since the oppressive regime was last in power. In that time, a generation of Afghan girls grew up with increased access to sports, and the country developed many national athletic programs for women. 

In 2010, the New York Times reported Afghanistan had started national teams for women in 22 different sports, though many in fledgling stages. Fast forward a decade, and the situation in Afghanistan is once again bleak in almost all aspects, especially for women. 

By taking a closer look at some of the sport programs they have worked so hard to grow over the past two decades, the magnitude of their impending loss is more fully realized.

Cricket:

The sport of cricket, for both men and women, is governed by the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB). After years of hard work, ACB became a full member of the International Cricket Council in 2017. One requirement for ICC membership is to have an active national women’s cricket team. 

According to ACB’s 2020 annual report, tournaments for school age girls have been held from 2014 on. Using those school teams as the player pool, the ACB hosted a series of development camps throughout 2020, gradually narrowing down from 100 original attendees to selecting 40 of the most talented players to the final camp. At the end of the last camp in November 2020, the ACB selected 25 women to be the nation’s first female cricketers awarded professional contracts from ACB. One year prior to the Taliban regaining power, Afghanistan had named its first ever salaried national women’s cricket team.

Soccer:

Similar to the selection process for cricket, a national Afghan women’s soccer team was first formed in 2007. Getting adequate support for the program has been an ongoing battle. Funding, practice space, quality coaching, and athletic training have continually been hard to come by, not to mention familial and community support. 

For much of the team’s existence they practiced on a NATO helipad field that was enclosed from onlookers. The national team’s first official international match was in 2010 at the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Women’s Championship. The biannual SAFF Championship was the main tournament for the Afghan team until 2018, when the country switched membership to the Central Asian Football Association (CAFA). That same year several of the women’s players came forward with allegations of sexual and physical abuse by the Afghanistan Football Federation President, Keramuudin Karim.

Given all the hurdles they faced, it’s impressive how much they were able to grow the sport for girls and women in the country. By 2021, there were eight teams participating in the Kabul Women’s Football League. Winners from this league moved on to compete in the Women’s Champions League, where top teams from each province competed for a national title. 

The harrowing evacuation of Afghanistan’s national team players has been well documented in recent weeks. In the past several days, further reports surfaced showing members of the junior national team and their families successfully made it to Pakistan and were housed by Pakistan’s Football Federation before flying to Portugal where they have been granted asylum. 

Though the high number of women’s soccer players who have successfully emigrated is welcome news, there are masses of female footballers who will remain in the country under an oppressive ruling body that will go to great lengths to prevent them from setting foot back on the pitch.

Basketball:

Efforts to form a national women’s basketball team began shortly after the U.S. ousted the Taliban in 2001. But as late as 2012, the team still had a hard time finding legit opponents, often playing against school age youth teams. 

In an effort to grow the sport, organizers began hosting an annual Afghanistan Women’s Basketball Championship in Kabul. In 2013, the tournament reportedly included over 100 players from 10 teams across three provinces and served as an opportunity to vie for a spot on the 12-person national team. One national team player, Samira Asghari, went on to become the first Afghan member of the International Olympic Committee.

Wheel-Chair Basketball:

One of the biggest sporting success stories in the country has been the development of the Afghan national women’s wheelchair basketball team. Created through a program run by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the team made huge strides from 2012, when they were too afraid to play with spectators, to 2017, when they won an international tournament in Bali. With solid support from the ICRC in the form of equipment, practice space, transportation, and coaching, the number of Afghan women playing the sport exploded, with 120 players on record as of 2017.  

Handball: 

In 2018, the first ever women’s national handball championship was held involving five teams from three provinces, serving as a selection event for the senior and youth national teams.

Track and Field:

Afghanistan has sent three female sprinters to the Olympics since 2004. In June 2021, 60 athletes competed across six running events to qualify for the Women’s Athletics National Team. In Tokyo, flagbearer Kimia Yousofi set a national record for women in the 100M sprint.

Martial Arts: 

In 2004, one of the first two female Olympians from Afghanistan was judoka Friba Rezayee. The 2021 women’s national taekwondo tournament held in Kabul featured 50 athletes.

Volleyball: 

Afghanistan holds a national women’s volleyball tournament every year, and earlier this year an Iran-based Afghan refugee team won the 2021 title, beating a city team from Kabul in the final. Ten teams participated.

Cycling: 

In late 2020, two female freestyle cyclists were named to the Afghan Cycling National Team.

– – –

The Taliban have yet to make any formal statement regarding the future of women’s sports in Afghanistan, but given the regime’s history, public comments from a high ranking official, and the fact no women were included in the new cabinet, the outlook is not good. 

Documenting the sports programs Afghan women bravely pursued over the past two decades is one small way to say, “We see you. We support you.”

The doomed future of women’s sports in Afghanistan may not be as black and white as the Taliban’s deputy head of the cultural commission, Ahmadullah Wasiq, initially indicated in comments made earlier this month. Wasiq’s interview with Australian broadcaster SBS was in regard to an upcoming men’s cricket Test match scheduled for late November between Australia and Afghanistan. It would be the first ever Test between the two nations and many wondered if it would continue as planned given Afghanistan’s recent upheaval. As the Taliban take-over culminated, party officials assured Cricket Australia and the Afghanistan Cricket Board that the historic match would not be derailed. Wasiq told SBS that the Taliban wanted “to reassure all our players, the cricket board officials, and colleagues that they can continue their games without any fear or intimidation, and call on their colleagues to come and play with confidence, and to also get prepared for domestic and upcoming international games.”

In the follow up interview that made global headlines, it became clear that when Wasiq said “all our players,” he was strictly referring to male players. 

“I don’t think women will be allowed to play cricket because it is not necessary that women should play cricket. In cricket, they might face a situation where their face and body will not be covered. Islam does not allow women to be seen like this. It is the media era, and there will be photos and videos, and then people watch it. Islam and the Islamic Emirate [Afghanistan] do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed.”

No one familiar with the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam was surprised by these comments. Female athletes have been among the many groups striving to flee the country, with several stating they now fear for their lives. Those who couldn’t get out have been advised by teammates outside the country to erase all evidence of their sporting lives, even to “burn their jerseys.”

Immediately after Wasiq indicated the women’s cricket team would now be banned, people began wondering how national and international cricket organizations would respond. Would Cricket Australia boycott the scheduled test? Would teams pull out of the men’s T20 World Cup scheduled for October if the Afghan team is permitted to enter as planned?

In 2017, the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) became a full-fledged member of the International Cricket Council (ICC). One requirement of ICC membership is to create and maintain an active national women’s cricket team. But as of 2018, female cricketers in Afghanistan reported ACB officials had done almost nothing to support a women’s team and didn’t believe women should play. Even if they personally supported the idea of a women’s team, officials claimed they received threats from Taliban members warning against its development. Without providing clarity on what changed, the ACB’s 2020 annual report claims they made good on the ICC requirement and signed the top 25 Afghan female cricketers to professional contracts after holding a series of development camps throughout the country.

If the Taliban bans the nascent women’s cricket team, ACB may lose its ICC membership, which would be a huge blow for the men’s team on the international level. 

An ICC spokesperson told SBS News that the body will discuss the matter at its next board meeting. 

“The ICC has been monitoring the changing situation in Afghanistan and is concerned to note recent media reports that women will no longer be allowed to play cricket. This and the impact it will have on the continued development of the game will be discussed by the ICC Board at its next meeting.”

Whereas the ICC may opt to extend exceptions of its gender equality requirements to Afghanistan, as they previously did when granting ACB full membership status before its women’s team was fully active, Cricket Australia has indicated it will not be similarly generous: 

“If recent media reports that women’s cricket will not be supported in Afghanistan are substantiated, Cricket Australia would have no alternative but to not host Afghanistan for the proposed Test Match due to be played in Hobart.” 

Women’s cricket has a strong support system and following in Australia. In early 2020, Australia’s women’s team came close to breaking the attendance record for a women’s sporting event at their ICC Women’s T20 World Cup final vs. India, with 86,174 fans watching in person. 

With Australia drawing a hard line in the sand, the leaders of the ACB are now in a highly motivated position to convince the Taliban to permit their women’s program to continue at a level that satisfies global ideals. Interestingly, ACB’s Chairman, Azizullah Fazli, was quick to downplay Wasiq’s harsh statements and to temper concerns over the safety of their female players.

 “The women’s cricket coach, Diana Barakzai, and her players are all safe and living in their home country. Many countries have asked them to leave Afghanistan. But they have not left Afghanistan, and at the moment, they are in their places.” 

He also didn’t waiver in his assuredness that the women’s team would be allowed to persist stating, “We will give you our clear position on how we will allow women to play cricket. Very soon, we will give you good news on how we will proceed.”

It’s hard to adopt Fazli’s optimism, especially considering one of ACB’s two female board members, Hasina Safi, has gone into hiding now that the Taliban dissolved her position as Minister of Women’s Affairs and transformed her office building into a ministry for “the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice.” Fazli’s assurance that ACB’s female cricketers are safe and content to stay in Afghanistan also starkly contradicts reports from the BBC that members of the team have been threatened by the Taliban and are fearing for their lives. 

There is the possibility that the Taliban is fully willing to sacrifice Afghanistan’s standing in men’s international sports in order to adhere to their strict religious beliefs about women’s propriety. But Wasiq also recently backpedaled after the strong reactions to his initial statements, clarifying a few days later that his comments were not an official announcement of Taliban policy. 

“The policies [on women’s sports] might be announced in the future,” Wasiq said. “What I had said in the past was my opinion based on the country’s cultural and security situation.”

The social and political power of sport is on full display as any hope of a future for women’s sports in Taliban-led Afghanistan now hinges on pressure from global sporting authorities and tact from existing Afghan sports federations. The fact that the development and support of women’s teams is a requirement of membership in organizations like the ICC is heartening. The tragedy is that women hold almost zero leadership positions in the parties at the table here. And the stakes could not be higher for women in Afghanistan.

When Brittney Griner entered the league in 2013, the former-Baylor star quickly delivered on the high expectations that greeted her by bringing a WNBA championship to Phoenix in her second season. Averaging 15.6 points, 8 rebounds and 3.8 blocks per game that year, Griner led the team with 6.8 win shares and was everything Diana Taurasi needed in a running mate.

Most assumed more league titles were sure to follow. But six chances have now come and gone without another Mercury appearance in the Finals.

Taurasi took a full WNBA season off (2015) and has been in and out with injuries, while Griner has been steadily doing her part in the paint. She’s been a WNBA All-Star every single year they’ve held a game; averaging 20-plus points in four of the last five years, she’s also led the Mercury in win shares in four of her eight seasons in Phoenix.

While her rebounding and defensive numbers have stayed consistent, they’ve dipped in recent years after she won back-to-back WNBA Defensive Player of the Year awards in 2014 and 2015. During those years, she set the record for most blocks in a season (2014) and average blocks per game (2015) — records which still stand today.

Given her skill, athleticism and game-changing height (Griner is listed at 6-foot-9), fans have come to expect Griner to dominate in the paint, night in and night out, season after season. Anytime she doesn’t take over a game, there’s a nagging suspicion that some next-level greatness has been left untapped.

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Griner and Team USA celebrate winning Olympic gold in Tokyo. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

During the WNBA’s 2020 “Wubble” season at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., Griner unexpectedly left the WNBA bubble “for personal reasons” after just 13 of the Mercury’s 22 regular-season games. She eventually spoke about her departure several months later while at a USA Basketball camp in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics.

While maintaining a degree of privacy, she made it clear her decision was based on mental health, stating, “With everything I was dealing with, I needed to take that leave. It took a lot for me to make that decision.”

Months before Naomi Osaka pulled out of the French Open, igniting a maelstrom of public debate, Griner quietly sparked her own conversation by departing to take care of herself.

“I definitely used counseling a lot when I left,” she later said. “It’s helped me out tremendously. I think more people should be open to talking about mental health issues and finding that centerpiece with themselves.”

In addition to counseling, Griner was able to spend time camping, off-roading and working on her Jeep back in Phoenix. Given the year-round grind that’s required of WNBA players who also play overseas, those weeks of personal time were a rare opportunity for Griner. And they seem to have paid off.

After returning to the court at the start of 2021 to play once again with her UMMC Ekaterinburg team in Russia, Griner won a third consecutive EuroLeague title and then the Olympic gold medal with Team USA in Tokyo. In Japan, she started all six games and averaged 22.2 points, 7.2 rebounds and nine blocks, all while shooting the highest field goal percentage of anyone on the team.

But the biggest indicator of a refreshed mindset may be Griner’s performance in the WNBA this season. She is currently second in the league in points per game (20.8) and second in field goal percentage. She is leading the league in blocks and averaging a career best 9.5 rebounds per game. And she’s leading the Mercury in win shares. (Not a small feat given the star power of running mates Diana Taurasi and Skylar Diggins-Smith.)

And although WNBA fans aren’t in it for the slam dunks, the fact that Griner has dunked four times already this season, something she hasn’t done since 2014 and 2015, reveals just how fired up she’s feeling. One more and she’ll break her own record for most dunks in a single season.

 Back at USA Basketball camp early in the year, Griner elaborated on why it was important for her to be open about taking care of her mental health.

“We really don’t talk about our feelings. Just put it in a box and forget about it, push it to the back,” she said. “That’s something that hurts us as a society honestly and is something that’s going to change with more athletes speaking up about it.”

After the Olympic break, Griner and the Mercury went on a 10-game win streak before losing to the top-ranked Connecticut Sun last Saturday. Given that eight of those wins came against the bottom three teams in the league, their upcoming final two games of the season, against the Seattle Storm and Las Vegas Aces, will be a much better test of the team’s playoff readiness.

As of now, they are one win behind the Storm for a top-four regular season finish and a first-round bye in the playoffs.

If they go on a run this WNBA postseason, it will largely be thanks to Griner’s willingness to look after herself last year in the 2020 bubble. She invested in herself by taking a break, and now the Mercury may be the ultimate benefactors.

Tune in: The Phoenix Mercury take on the Seattle Storm this Friday at 10 p.m. ET on NBATV.

The Tokyo Paralympics came to a close on Sunday, marking the end of two weeks of competition featuring roughly 4,500 athletes from 161 nations competing in 539 events across 22 sports. After the year-long delay and ongoing Covid-19 complications, the games finally came to fruition. Though fans and families were not permitted to attend, the unbelievable accomplishments of these amazing athletes were nevertheless on full display. 

Here’s eight of the most memorable moments from the 16th edition of the Summer Paralympics.

1. USA Sitting Volleyball defeats archrival China for gold

The USA and China have met in the sitting volleyball gold medal match at every Paralympics since 2008. China won the first two match ups, taking gold in 2008 and 2012, with the U.S. finally coming out on top for their first gold in the sport in Rio 2016. During pool play in Tokyo, the Americans lost to China 0-3 for what would be their only loss of the tournament. After beating Brazil in the semis to earn a re-match versus China for gold, the U.S. came out strong and took a 2-0 lead in the first two sets. China recovered to take the third set and force a fourth, something neither team had experienced since arriving in Japan. After battling back and forth through most of the fourth, the U.S. pulled away and won 25-19 to repeat as gold medalists against their rivals.

2. Jessica Long. That’s it. That’s the tweet

Jessica Long has been the most prolific Paralympic medalist for Team USA for the past 17 years. In Tokyo, in her fifth Paralympic games, the 29-year-old added six medals, including three golds (100m butterfly, 200m medley, 4x100m medley relay), to bring her career total to 29. Only one American Paralympian, swimmer Trischa Zorn-Hudson, has ever won more.

3. Oksana Masters becomes a four (!) sport medalist

Having previously medaled in the Paralympic sports of rowing, cross country skiing, and biathlon, Masters won two Tokyo gold medals in cycling in the time trial (H4-5) and the road race (H5). With these most recent victories, she has solidified her standing as the most versatile American athlete in Olympic or Paralympic history. After finishing just off the podium in Rio, Oksana won her two cycling golds in back-to-back days just four months after recovering from leg surgery.

4. Kendall Gretsch’s photo finish

When her wheelchair classification was not included in the 2016 Paralympics for triathlon, American Kendall Gretsch took a note from Oksana Masters’ playbook and took up cross country skiing. At the 2018 PyeongChang games, Gretsch and Masters finished one-two in the women’s 6km sitting biathlon event. Making her summer games debut in Tokyo, Gretsch was three and half minutes behind the leader after the swim portion in the PTWC triathlon. She quickly moved to second place during the recumbent hand cycle segment and then began reeling in the leader on the racing wheelchair section. With one kilometer left and a 25 second gap to close, Gretsch sprinted her way to the finish, catching reigning world champion Lauren Parker at the finish line to win the gold medal by one one-hundredth of a second.

5. Avani Lekhara’s historic gold

At just 19 years old, Lekhara became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic or Paralympic gold medal when she matched the world record and set a new Paralympic record in the 10M air rifle standing (SH1) with a score of 249.6. She later added a bronze medal in the 50M rifle 3 position (SH1). History, made. 

6. The Golden Slam dream is alive

Diede de Groot is a 24-year-old wheelchair tennis player from the Netherlands who was born with unequal leg length. She began playing the sport at the age of seven and has gone on to absolutely dominate since making her Grand Slam debut in 2017. Over the past four years she has won 11 Grand Slam titles, including all three slams so far in 2021. After taking the gold medal in Tokyo with a two-set victory over Yui Kamiji of Japan, de Groot is one US Open title away from winning the fairytale Golden Slam of tennis (winning all four Grand Slams plus the Olympic/Paralympic gold medal in a single year).

7. Afghan Zakia Khudadadi’s unlikely arrival in Tokyo

Amid the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the U.S.’s military exodus, Paralympic athletes Zakia Khudadadi and Hossain Rasouli were caught in the mayhem of thousands trying to flee the country. A Paralympic volunteer carried the Afghan flag during the opening ceremonies after organizers were told the athletes were not going to be able to leave their home country. Behind-the-scenes efforts to get the athletes safely to Japan never ceased. While specific details of their journey are not likely to surface, they eventually succeeded in getting out of the country with a complex system of assistance from several governments and organizations. After safely arriving in Japan, Khudadadi, a 22-year-old Taekwondo athlete, became the first Afghan woman to compete in the Paralympics since 2004.

8. Changing of the guard in wheelchair basketball

Since 1980, only three countries have won the gold medal in women’s wheelchair basketball. Germany has three of them, Canada has another three, and the U.S. has four. This year, however, Canada went down in the quarters and both the U.S. and Germany lost in the semis, to China and the Netherlands respectively. The Netherlands went on to beat China 50-31 in the final, securing the country’s first gold medal in the sport after earning the bronze in both 2016 and 2012.

Final medal count:

In the overall medal count, China dominated all categories, finishing with 96 golds and 207 total Paralympic medals. Great Britain and the U.S. followed with 41 and 37 gold medals respectively. In total medals, the U.S. came in fourth while Great Britain and the Russian Paralympic Committee placed second and third.

Before 2021, many would have said that golfer Nelly Korda already had her break year on the LPGA Tour.

In 2019, the 23-year-old from Bradenton, Florida, made the cut in 19 out of 20 events, had a career best 12 top-ten finishes, won two LPGA tournaments and passed the $3 million mark in career earnings in just her third year on tour. That’s pretty tough to beat. And yet in 2021, after a pandemic-riddled 2020 season, Nelly Korda has been on a tear, making the leap from potential superstar to the undisputed No. 1 player in the game.

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Warren Little/Getty Images

After finishing in third behind her older sister Jessica Korda, who took first at the Tournament of Champions to kick off the year, Korda won the first full-field tour competition of 2021 at the Gainbridge Championship by a three-stroke margin. Throughout the spring tour, she earned a handful of top ten finishes, including a tie for third at the first major of the year, the ANA Inspiration in Palm Springs. In early June, she hit an unwelcome speed bump by not making the cut for the US Women’s Open for the second year in a row. To say she had a strong rebound after this disappointment would be putting it lightly.

Within a two-month period from mid-June to early August, Korda won another LPGA tournament (the Meijer LPGA Classic), her first LPGA Major (the Women’s PGA Championship), the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, and became the top ranked women’s golfer in the world, the first American to do so since 2014. 

Not a bad summer.

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Nelly Korda poses with the trophy following the final round of the Gainbridge LPGA. (Photo by Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)

Winning that first major title is a moment pro golfers never forget if they are lucky enough to experience it. Korda’s Women’s PGA Championship in June came via a second round 11-under 63 and two eagles in the fourth round to beat fellow American Lizette Salas by three strokes. In Japan a little over a month later, Korda went into the fourth round of the Olympics with a three-stroke lead only to see it slip away on the front nine before building it back up with three straight birdies on the back nine. With two holes left for the final two groups, play was paused for a one-hour storm delay. Luckily for Korda, Jessica was also on Team USA and had already finished her final round, so the sisters chatted and kept things light during the wait. 

After play resumed, Korda approached the 18th tee box in a tie for first with Mone Inami of Japan who was in the group ahead. But then Inami bogied the final hole, cracking open the door for gold. In one of the highest pressure moments of her career, Korda was able to hold par on the 18th and finish with a one-stroke victory and solitary claim to the Olympic gold medal. 

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Korda celebrates winning gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

“For her to be doing what she’s doing, it’s insane to me,” Jessica Korda said of her sister. “This is like total GOAT status to me. To win three times in a season, be world No. 1, going for gold.”

 “The last 18 months have truly been a whirlwind,” Korda told Just Women’s Sports. “But to come out of such an uncertain time playing the best golf of my career, and to win my first major championship, become World No. 1 and win an Olympic gold medal all in the last few months is more than I ever could have dreamed.”

What makes Korda’s amazing run even more exciting is that there’s still so much of the season left. There are eight remaining individual LPGA tournaments up for grabs, as well as this weekend’s Solheim Cup, where she and Jessica will team up for the United States for the second time this year. 

Despite all the accolades, Korda appears to be approaching the rest of 2021 with a very level head. As she prepared for the final major of the year (the AIG Women’s Open) upon returning from Japan, she demonstrated her commitment to staying balanced by opting out of the pre-tournament press conference to get extra rest and work out some kinks at the range. Later at the tournament, when asked about the pressure that accompanies the number one world ranking, Korda replied, “Obviously there’s expectations, but you just try to settle down and keep your head down and go with the flow.” 

Her historic hot streak may have cooled a bit as Korda finished the AIG Women’s Open in a tie for 13th, but at just 23 years old and with a chance to once again make her mark at the the Solheim Cup, it’s clear that both her year — and her reign — are far from over. 

Sports have never been “just sports.” Whether consciously recognized or not, spheres of athletic competition are also and will always be socially contested terrain — microcosms of our larger societies that reveal, reflect and even revolutionize issues extending beyond the court.

When Naomi Osaka walked into her first-round match at the 2020 US Open wearing a black face mask with the name Breonna Taylor printed across it, she became the latest in a long line of athletes to express and embrace this truth.

After winning that first match, Osaka revealed she had brought six other similar masks with her to New York, each one bearing the name of another Black person killed on account of racial violence in recent years: Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Philando Castile and Tamir Rice.

Osaka planned to wear a new mask for each match, meaning that if she reached the final, all seven names would be given their due spotlight. Suddenly, her quest to win a third Grand Slam took on a resonance that transcended tennis.

Osaka’s mere presence (and success) in one of America’s most historically white and economically privileged sports was its own statement, one that preceded her demonstration against racism.

The power of representation in the top levels of tennis has been illustrated over the past two decades by the increasing number of Black women in the WTA since the Williams sisters first set foot in Grand Slam arenas as teen phenoms. At last year’s US Open, 12 Black American women made the draw, making up 37.5 percent of the U.S. contingent and about 10 percent of the entire field. The fact that similar numbers have not been noticeable on the men’s side speaks to the specificity of the phrase, “If you can see it, you can be it.”

Osaka herself is a product of “the Venus and Serena effect,” or more specifically, the Richard Williams effect. When Osaka’s father, Leonard Francios, saw the success Richard Williams had in training his daughters to become champions in a sport he had never played, he decided to give it a try with his own two girls, Mari and Naomi. Osaka spent her childhood playing tennis all day with her dad and sister and doing homeschool in the evenings. Her mother, Tamaki Osaka, worked outside the home to support the family.

In 2018, her father’s vision came to fruition when Osaka won the US Open final against Serena Williams and was catapulted into tennis (and soon after, global) stardom. Since then, she’s been on a rocket ship of endorsement deals and publicity, winning three more Grand Slam trophies and becoming the highest-earning female athlete in the world. And she’s still just 23.

Osaka’s family has lived in the United States since she was 3 years old. Her father is from Haiti and her mother is from Japan, where both she and her sister were born.

Osaka officially gave up her U.S. citizenship in order to play for Japan at the Tokyo Olympics. As she told the New York Times in ­­­­2018, “I don’t necessarily feel like I’m American. I wouldn’t know what that feels like.” In the weeks leading up to the US Open last summer, she wrote in Esquire, “As long as I can remember, people have struggled to define me. I’ve never really fit into one description.”

At last year’s US Open, Osaka described herself as a “vessel” hoping to spread awareness, saying she chose the face masks to “make people start talking.” A reticent figure historically, Osaka made the loudest statement possible by funneling the attention thrust upon her talent into a national reflection on racial violence.

“It made me stronger,” she said at the time, “because I felt like I have more desire to win, because I want to show more names.”

Perhaps her feelings of being American have changed in the years since then. Perhaps not. But one year ago this week, Osaka embodied a uniquely American tradition of activism, one grounded in free speech and fermented in a vision of transformative justice. In doing so, she quietly yet publicly built upon the legacies of Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, Billie Jean King, Venus and Serena Williams and many others in using her platform to call for a more just and equal world. At the same time, she challenged the notion that group identity is paramount, or as simple as checking a few boxes.

After entering Arthur Ashe Stadium for the 2020 US Open Final wearing her seventh mask with Tamir Rice printed across it, Osaka came back from a one-set, two-game deficit to overtake Victoria Azarenka for her second US Open title and third Grand Slam of her career. In the post-match interview, she was asked what message she’d been trying to send with her pre-game masks. Her immediate response is still relevant today: 

“Well, what was the message that you got?”

The US Open kicks off this week in New York City with a full house of spectators expected to attend. Fans won’t have the honor of watching either of the Williams sisters take the court, as both have withdrawn due to injury. But with Ash Barty and Naomi Osaka both in top form, viewers will be witness to two young stars whose zeniths could finally collide on the grand stage — if they can survive the array of talented competitors that stand in their way.

Here’s who to watch in New York during tennis’ final Grand Slam of the year:

The Favorites

Australia’s Ash Barty is heading into the US Open with all the momentum one could hope for at this point in the North American hard-court season.

The world #1 in rankings recently became the first player to claim five WTA singles titles in a single season since Serena Williams did it in 2014. That fifth trophy came last week at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati, where Barty worked her way through several Grand Slam contenders on her way to the title, including Victoria Azarenka, Barbora Krejcikova, and Angelique Kerber. When the 25-year-old won Wimbledon earlier this summer she proved her inaugural Grand Slam title at the 2019 French Open and subsequent number one ranking that persisted through the strange landscape of the pandemic were no fluke. But she has yet to reach the finals rounds of a US Open. Having lost in the round of 16 in both 2018 and 2019 and then opted out in 2020 due to the pandemic, she is poised to make a very deep run this week in New York.

The woman most likely to rain on the 2021 Barty parade is none other than Naomi Osaka. While her trajectory this year has been much more of a roller coaster, she has four hard-court Grand Slam titles to Barty’s zero. Out of the last four Grand Slam tournaments held, Osaka won the first two and then either withdrew or opted out of the next two. She hasn’t lost a single Grand Slam match since January 2020 at the Australian Open, way back in the Before-COVID-Times. Both she and Barty lost early at the Tokyo Olympics, but Osaka also lost in the round of 16 at the Western & Southern Open. Off the court, she continues to figure out how and whether she wants to meet current expectations of a highly publicized life. Only she knows the extent to which those struggles may be impacting her play.

Barty and Osaka are tied 2-2 in head-to-head matches. Even though Osaka dropped a spot from #2 to #3 in overall rankings last week, her and Barty are fortunately on opposite sides of the bracket. Even with a rocky lead up to the last Grand Slam of the year, Osaka is a proven champion with a stellar hard-court record and has a solid claim to the title of best women’s player in the world. Cheers to the tennis gods for a draw that leaves the door open for a Barty v. Osaka US Open final.

Contenders with momentum on their side

One of the most exciting players of 2021 has been Barbora Krejcikova. The 25-year-old from the Czech Republic just recently broke into the top ten and currently sits #9 overall, by far her best ranking in singles.

Krejcikova entered 2021 with two Grand Slam doubles titles from the 2018 French Open and 2018 Wimbledon and has watched her singles success finally take off. This year, she has won three WTA singles titles, including her first Grand Slam at the French Open. She also managed to capture her second French Open doubles championship that same week and then followed that up with a gold medal in doubles at the Tokyo Olympics. While the clay court seems to suit her well, she’s proving the hard court fits nicely too. She won the first hard-court tournament of the year at the Livesport Prague Open and made it to quarters of the Western & Southern Open before losing to Barty. 

In the #12 spot in WTA rankings, Swiss player Belinda Bencic is also enjoying a breakout 2021. Having won the Olympic singles gold medal and then following it up with a strong run at the Western & Southern Open where she lost in the quarters, Bencic is looking like a solid threat as she heads into her strongest Grand Slam event.

Karolina Pliskova and Angelique Kerber are another two to keep your eye on. Pliskova has gone deep in the two hard-court lead-up tournaments to the US Open and was on the opposite side of the net to Barty in the Wimbledon final. Having made it to the quarters, semis, or final of a Grand Slam eight times, she appears to be on the precipice of finally tipping that scale. Kerber, on the other hand, has experienced Grand Slam title glory three times in her career and with appearances in this year’s Wimbledon semis and the Western & Southern Open semis, she is definitely a threat.

The Question Marks

Aryna Sabalenka, the woman who just surpassed Osaka to claim the #2 overall ranking, is still a bit of an unknown heading into New York. She put her name on the map this summer by making it to the semis of Wimbledon and she also got to the semis of one hard-court tourney early in August, but lost in the first round of another. Whether the 23-year-old from Belarus has something special in store for New York is a bit of a guess.

Bianca Andreescu hasn’t had the strong return from injury that many were looking forward to during this hard-court season. The 2019 US Open champion has had a rough showing for 2021, and her recent hard-court tournaments have been no exception. But at only 21 years old and with a new coach on board she has plenty of time to back up her 2019 victory even if it’s not imminent.

Veterans Simona Halep and Victoria Azarenka will also need a bit of luck on their side in order to make a strong run this week. With injuries and early exists from lead-in tournaments, the stars don’t seem to be aligned for either of the two-time Grand Slam champions. 

US Open first-round play begins Monday, Aug. 30 and continues until the two women left standing face off for the title at 4pm ET on Saturday, September 11th.

When the Paralympics open on Aug. 24 in Tokyo with athletes’ family members unable to attend, two players on the USA Women’s Sitting Volleyball Team will rest a bit easier knowing their children are well provided for back home. 

Lora Webster and Kaleo Kanahele Maclay are two recipients of track GOAT Allyson Felix’s new grant program called “The Power of She,” which provides financial support to mom athletes to help offset childcare costs associated with travel for training and competition. Felix, a leading advocate of maternity rights for mom athletes, teamed up with Athleta and the Women’s Sports Foundation to launch this new grant program ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. 

While travel of any parent puts hardship on families with children, the fact that women make up the vast majority of primary caregivers for young children makes Felix’s grant a welcome source of support for women like Webster and Maclay.

Lora Webster, who is heading into her fifth Paralympic Games this summer, has been playing volleyball since she was five. At eleven she was diagnosed with bone cancer below her left knee and underwent a surgery called rotationplasty that removed the cancerous bone, including her knee, and reattached her lower leg (rotated 180 degrees) to her femur. This surgical option was appealing as it gave her full range of movement and allowed the sport-loving kid to resume athletic activity as quickly as possible. Once she had fully recuperated and finished chemotherapy, Webster got back to the court and eventually helped lead her Arizona high school (standing) volleyball team to the state championship in 2004. 

That same year, Webster made a difficult choice when she decided to forego a DI standing volleyball scholarship in order to focus on the sitting version of the game. Though initially hesitant to try adaptive sports, she had recently joined the women’s sitting volleyball national team and quickly realized she was more challenged by and more passionate about the sitting game.

She has been fueled by that same passion ever since winning bronze with Team USA at the Athens Paralympics, where women’s sitting volleyball made its debut. But she hasn’t done it alone. She and husband Paul Bergellini have three children and another one on the way. Webster may not have her family with her in Tokyo, but she’ll be playing while pregnant with her fourth kiddo.

With The Power of She funds, Webster will now be able to afford to fly her mom to New York to cover the family’s childcare needs while she’s gone without suffering a significant financial burden when her mom misses 10 days of work. And this time around she’ll have a teammate who can empathize with the stresses of balancing elite athletics and motherhood.

Kaleo Kanahele Maclay is heading into her third Paralympics but her first as a mom. She and husband Matt Maclay have a 3-year-old son named Duke. Like Webster, she is among the first cohort of athletes to benefit from the Power of She program. 

Maclay started training with the national sitting volleyball team when she was just 12 years old and played in her first international competition at 14. Bill Hamiter, head coach of the national team, had spotted the talented young setter in the standing club volleyball scene and recruited her to try the sitting version of the game.

Maclay was born with a club foot and has limited flexibility and muscle in her lower left leg. After making the transition to the sitting game as a young teen, she is now considered the best setter in the game. And now with a family of her own, she’s grateful for Webster and other athlete moms for paving the way. 

As she told NPR this summer, “I think people like Allyson Felix, Serena Williams, Lora Webster, Kerri Walsh, who have really shown that you can be a mom and an elite athlete at the same time, have deeply encouraged me to know that I can do the same.”

Watch Webster, Maclay, and the rest of Team USA defend their gold medal in Tokyo from August 27th to September 5th on NBC networks, Peacock, NBCOlympics.com, or the NBC Sports app.

The 2020 Summer Paralympics begin on Tuesday, Aug. 24 in Tokyo. 

If what enthralls us about the Olympics is the display of superhuman feats, what the Paralympics offer are the most deeply human feats. Succeeding in the face of obstacles and limitations, whether visible on our bodies or not, is perhaps our most universal of human pursuits. And it’s because of this that the achievements of every Paralympian have the potential to strike a chord deep within each of us. 

While each is a champion in their own way, these are three Paralympians we’re especially excited to see compete in Tokyo. 

Oksana Masters: Cycling, Cross Country Skiing, Biathlon, and Rowing

Oksana Masters was born in the Ukraine in 1989 with several birth defects to her limbs as a result of in-utero radiation exposure from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster. Her left leg was six inches shorter than her right and both were missing critical bones for weight bearing. She had six toes on each foot, five webbed fingers on each hand and no thumbs. Due to the extensive medical care she required, her birth mother relinquished her for adoption.

Masters spent seven and a half years in three different orphanages before being adopted in 1996 by Gay Masters. An American speech pathologist, Gay spent two years in a bureaucratic adoption battle with the Ukrainian government after a black-and-white photo of Masters from her adoption agent convinced her that the little being looking back at her was meant to be her daughter. The first several years of Master’s American life were filled with surgeries to give her more mobility in her hands. Eventually, both of her legs were amputated.

At age 13, after struggling to fit in with her school’s main sports teams, Masters reluctantly attended an adaptive rowing practice and quickly fell in love with the sport. A decade later, she won her first Paralympic medal, taking bronze at the 2012 London Games in the mixed rowing competition (trunk and arm doubles sculls) with partner Rob Jones.

After this first taste of Paralympic glory, Masters realized her strength and skill could be applied to other sports that targeted the same muscle groups, such as adaptive cross-country skiing and biathlon. She spent just 14 short months learning to ski and shoot. Masters then not only qualified for the 2014 Sochi Games (in six events) but became a Winter Paralympic medalist, wining silver in the 12km and bronze in the 5km cross-country skiing competitions.

A back injury prevented Masters from returning to rowing after Sochi, so she decided to try hand cycling as a way to cross-train for skiing. By the time the Rio Paralympics came around, she was so skilled at her “offseason” sport that she qualified for the Paralympic cycling team, but fell just short of the podium in her two Rio races.

Two years later at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, Masters’ cache of Paralympic medals more than doubled. She won gold in the 1.5km and 5km cross-country skiing events and bronze in the 12km. And this time, she added two biathlon silver medals (6km and 12.5km).

Coming into Tokyo, Masters is an eight-time Paralympic medalist across three different sports spanning both the Summer and Winter Games. She has qualified for every Summer and Winter Olympics since 2012, and after a fourth- and fifth-place finish in cycling at Rio in 2016, she is more determined than ever to add a Paralympic medal in what would be her fourth sport. A more versatile, accomplished and inspiring athlete is hard to imagine.

Rose Hollermann: Wheelchair Basketball

Rose Hollermann is by all accounts the best player on the U.S. women’s wheelchair basketball team and possibly in the entire women’s game. At age five, the Minnesota native suffered spinal cord damage that left her mostly paralyzed from the waist down after a tragic car accident that also took the lives of two of her older brothers. In the years following the accident, as she progressed in her recovery, Hollermann tried out a wide variety of adaptive sports, but her natural skill and passion for wheelchair basketball was apparent from the start.

By the time she was thirteen, Hollermann was a junior national champion. At age fifteen, she became the youngest player to ever make the senior national team, winning gold at the 2011 Parapan American Games that same year. After finishing in the dreaded fourth spot at the 2012 London Games, the team reached the top spot in Rio in 2016, giving Hollermann, still the youngest player on the team, her first Paralympic gold medal.

Upon high school graduation, Hollermann received a full athletic scholarship to the The University of Texas at Arlington to play on its wheelchair basketball team. Hollermann led the Movin’ Mavs to three national championship appearances and two national titles.

After graduating from UTA in 2019, Hollermann realized a lifelong dream by moving overseas to the Canary Islands. She signed with the Gran Canaria professional wheelchair basketball team that plays in the Division de Honour league in Spain. Playing in a league that is 95 percent male has given Hollermann valuable experience and confidence as she heads into Tokyo to help Team USA defend its gold medal.

Asya Miller: Goalball

Asya Miller, a 41-year-old Michigan native, will compete in her sixth consecutive Paralympic Games as a member of the U.S. women’s goalball team. Designed for visually impaired athletes, goalball is played on an indoor court roughly 20 yards long and 10 yards wide. Three players from each team play at a time. A three-pound ball with bells inside is thrown from one team’s half of the court to the other in an attempt to get it past the three opponents and into the court-wide goal just past the baseline. The athletes play on hands and knees, referencing taped lines and markers to orient their positioning. All players wear blackout sport goggles to equalize the broad spectrum of visual impairment among athletes.

Miller, who has an eye condition called Stargardt’s Disease and 20/200 vision at best with contacts in, was first introduced to goalball while an undergrad at Western Michigan University. In her first Paralympics in Sydney in 2000, she was a dual-sport athlete and earned a bronze medal for Team USA in the discus. Though her first passion was track and field, goalball offered a level of physicality, teamwork and strategy that other adaptive sports did not. One unique aspect of goalball is that novice spectators are often a nuisance. With players relying solely on sound to track the ball’s location, it’s crucial that the crowd remains silent during active play. 

“With Tokyo having limited spectators, we are probably the only sport who is excited about that,” Miller bemused in a recent interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting.

There are not many boxes she has left to check off her Paralympic bucket list, having already won a bronze (2016), silver (2004) and gold (2008) in goalball over the course of her decorated career. Now in her early forties, Miller has indicated this will be her final Games, giving her one last chance to go out in golden glory.