Pete Thamel wrote in Sunday's New York Times that Candace Parker hopes to follow the enormous Olympic footsteps of Mia Hamm, who burst onto the world sports scene in the 1996 Olympics.
“With her resplendent smile and transcendent game, Parker is on the cusp of becoming the first international icon in her sport. She has already lined up deals with Adidas and Gatorade, and she said she hoped to follow the path of the former American soccer star Mia Hamm, who used the Olympics and the World Cup to create a global identity.”
However, just a week ago, SI.com writer Selena Roberts wrote an article about the declining marketability of female Olympic athletes since the Hamm’s meteoric rise to the forefront of women’s sports, highlighted by the disheartening Marion Jones controversy.
Although female Olympic athletes experienced a brief period of popularity after the 1996 Olympics, according to Roberts, female athletes' performance on the court or field of play is no longer enough to attain stardom.
“What's in Vogue? Fewer female Olympians, more LeBron James. What's a gal gotta do to get a little attention? Play a man, be a novelty. That's how Michelle Wie has flexed her endorsement power despite never winning on the LPGA Tour.
That's how Danica Patrick has landed on the SI cover twice in three years. And in between Patrick? No solo act has appeared on the cover of SI without wearing a swimsuit.”
So where does this leave Parker and how can she overcome the trend that Roberts described?
It might seem at first that Parker doesn’t quite fit Roberts’ “criteria” for sustainable stardom. Parker did first gain mainstream attention for winning the 2004 Slam Dunk contest at the McDonald’s High School All-American Game, but that’s not exactly an example of playing men head-to-head.
And although she is a WNBA rookie and the first WNBA player to dunk twice, she is not the same type of “pioneering” novelty as Patrick, who is unique as a woman in the male dominated world of auto racing.
However, Parker has something that the other athletes mentioned in Roberts' article don’t: she’s already won on a big stage once this year (the NCAA championship at the University of Tennessee under the legendary Pat Summit) and now has the unprecedented opportunity
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