Source: TheStewartofNY/Phillip Faraone / Getty
The Paris 2024 Olympics gave us many thrilling moments and it also cemented the legacies of some of the world’s most prolific female athletes, including WNBA great A’ja Wilson and gymnastics icon Jordan Chiles. Now, both Chiles and Wilson earned their spots as two of TIME Magazine’s Women of The Year.
After a year of breaking records, overcoming adversity and silencing critics, both women are more than deserving.
Wilson‘s achievements from the last year alone include becoming the first Black female athlete to have her own signature shoe with Nike in over a decade, becoming the first WNBA player to record 1,000 points in a single season and winning a gold medal with Team USA. Regrettably, she and the Las Vegas Aces failed to three peat, something that Wilson describes as a difficult thing to move past.
“Not getting the three-peat was hard,” Wilson told Time. “The regret is the hardest part that I’ve had to deal with in this offseason, because I’m like, ‘What could I have done differently to get a different outcome?’ When in reality, it just wasn’t our time. … But it’s part of the game — it’s the healthy balance that you’ve got to fight through.”
For Chiles, the Paris games launched her into the pantheon of Olympic greats and catapulted her into controversy that she’s still recovering from. When she was ordered to return her bronze medal in the floor competition after being part of the first all-Black podium in the history of gymnastics, the whole world was stunned.
“It was something that I had to just push through and see where it would go,” Chiles told Time. “I’m in college now, and I have the ability to perform my life away at UCLA. People are always coming to me and just being like, ‘You’re always going to be loved.’ So I’m now just able to take what I have, let everybody do the outside work, and just push myself forward.”
At the heart of Chiles and Wilson’s popularity is not only what they mean to their individual sports but what their presence means to an entire generation of women.
“The diversity in our sport has obviously changed a lot. Knowing there weren’t a lot of women of color when I was younger, and knowing that I can help that — and I’ve been helping that — is really cool,” Chiles said.
So, will we see another historic run from these two legendary women at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles? If Wilson has her say ,we will.
“She’s [Chiles] going to be there, too. See us in L.A.”
Period!