Basketball · 1996 · Atlanta, USA
Sixty and Oh
Assembled a full year early and toured across two continents to rebuild the programme, a US women's team goes undefeated in Atlanta, and a professional league follows.
60-0
Overall record (tour + Olympics)
USA 111-87 Brazil
Gold medal result
~32,997
Attendance, final
A bronze medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics had gone down badly, so USA Basketball did something unusual: it picked the 1996 women's Olympic team a full year in advance and sent it out on an extended exhibition tour across the United States and internationally, rather than assembling a squad weeks before the Games.
They went 52-0 on that pre-Olympic tour and did not stop, going 8-0 through the Atlanta Games and beating Brazil 111-87 in the gold medal final on 4 August 1996, with Lisa Leslie scoring 29 in the final. The crowd at the Georgia Dome was close to 33,000, still among the largest ever to watch a women's basketball game.
The WNBA launched the following year, and several of that squad became the new league's first stars. A team put together to win one tournament ended up making the argument for a professional league to exist at all.
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