These Were the Biggest Moments for Women in Olympic History, Ranked

Tonya Harding is nothing short of a controversial figure in sports now. While she’s made history, she’s also made headlines potentially linking her to the attack on Nancy Kerrigan.

Yet, it would be an oversight to forget that she did, in fact, make history during her Olympic performance. She pulled off a move that took a lot of practice and dedication and became the first woman to land a triple axel. She’s a two-time Olympian and Skate American Champion, although she’s been stripped of some of her titles.

Lindsey Vonn is one of the most decorated athletes in alpine ski racing, much less even just one of the most decorated competitors in women’s competitions.

She won a gold medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics which was the first one won by an American woman. She’s also won a total of four World Cup championships, an achievement only shared with one other woman, Annemarie Moser-Pröll. This only touches on her long list of wins and she holds a total of three Olympic medals.

Aly Raisman is an athlete to watch out for at the Olympics. At only 26, she’s made history as a gymnast and will go down in history as a fantastic competitor.

She competed in 2012, at the London Olympics, where she won gold medals for floor and team competitions and a bronze medal on the balance beam. In 2016, she and Gabby Douglass became the only Americans to earn consecutive team gold medals. Today, she is one of the most decorated gymnasts in the world.

Shawn Johnson, now known as Shawn Johnson East, is a gymnast that competed for the American team in the 2008 Olympics and was on the national team from 2004 to 2008 and 2011 to 2012.

At the Olympics, she took the gold for the balance beam as well as silver medals for all-around, floor exercise, and team gymnastics. She’s also a five-time gold medal winner at the Pan American Games and is the 2007 individual all-around World Champion.

Born in Russia, Nastia Liukin represented the United States when she competed in the Olympics. During her career prior to her 2012 retirement, she became highly decorated.

Most impressively, when it comes to the Olympics, she’s a five-time medalist with a specific talent for the balance beam. In addition, she’s the Olympic All-Around champion for 2008 plus plenty of other accolades she attaches to her name. She even tied for the record of the most medals for an American gymnast in a singular, non-boycotted Olympic Games.

When it comes to women, there’s a lot of judgment based on age. There’s even more judgment when you consider a physical effort like competing in the Olympics.

This was a preconceived notion that Lorna Johnstone proved wrong in the 1972 Olympics. A British equestrian, she competed in the dressage competition. What blew audiences away at the time, though, was that when she competed, she was just a few days over 70 years old, making her the oldest competitor in the Olympics.

Viewers had the chance to catch the dream team of Kerri Walsh-Jennings and Misty May-Treanor quite a few times. They competed in 2004, 2008, and 2012 at the Summer Olympics.

The two competed in volleyball and have even been called “the greatest beach volleyball team of all time.” Together, the two of them hold three joint gold medals. After 2012, May-Treanor retired but Walsh-Jennings continued on to compete in 2016 with April Ross.

It’s always impressive when an athlete breaks records. It’s even more impressive when they set records and break them on their own, creating a league of their own.

Katie Ledecky is a force to be reckoned with. She was the most decorated athlete at the 2016 Olympic Games with six medals – one silver medal and five gold medals. Even more shocking, she was beating her own records and has the 13 fastest times for the 800-meter freestyle race while holding medals for the 200-meter freestyle as well.

In 1976, at the Montreal Olympic Games, the United States women’s swim team pulled off an impressive victory. They defeated the team from East Germany in a time before the Berlin Wall fell.

What made this win so impressive is that it was a year in the Olympics when substance scandals were a big deal. There was grounded suspicion that the women’s swim team from East Germany was a part of this state-sponsored unfair advantage but this women’s swim team still won.

Now retired, McKayla Maroney was a competitor in the 2012 Summer Olympics as part of the team now better known by the nickname, the Fierce Five.

Here, she won a gold medal as a team and a silver medal for her individual performance in the vault event. In the 2011 World Championships, she also won gold medals for both vault and team competitions. What’s most impressive, though, is that Maroney became the first U.S. female gymnast to defend her World Championship vault title.

Right before the 1994 Winter Olympics, it seemed like Nancy Kerrigan’s career was over after a backstage attack allegedly orchestrated by Tonya Harding. However, she came back to prove everyone wrong.

At the Lillehammer Games, Kerrigan returned to the ice, less than a year after her original injury. She performed in a way that fans and viewers remembered fondly and she even took home a silver medal for her efforts. Even after her Olympic career, she continued to perform in ice shows.

If you remember the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, you probably remember the performance that Kerri Strug put on that turned a little gruesome.

The United States team was slightly behind the Russian team and Strug was the final gymnast to perform. During her performance, though, she snapped two ligaments that the audience could hear. Still, she landed her final vault on one leg, scored a 9.7, and collapsed. This image of her coach carrying her to the ceremony made headlines.

At the London 2012 Olympic Games, Gabby Douglas took to the stage and left crowds around the world stunned. It wasn’t the last we’d see of her either – she quickly started training for 2016.

When she won gold, she became the first African American to share in the team gold and win the individual all-around gold. However, audiences were also drawn in by her story of overcoming the bullying of other gymnasts to make athletic history.

In 1991, all of the women’s soccer teams that competed that year made history. After all, it was the first year women’s soccer teams were introduced after an IOC ruling.

However, the United States team was the one that made headlines when they won gold with a narrow 2-1 victory over China. This meant that the United States team held the first-ever gold medal awarded to a women’s soccer team. The team included famous players like Shannon MacMillan, Brandi Chastain, and Mia Hamm.

The Olympic team for Canada in the 2014 Sochi Olympics made history in the category of curling. Working together, they took home a historic win that impressed everyone.

The team was made up of five people: Jill Officer, Kaitlyn Lawes, Jennifer Jones, Kirsten Wall, and Dawn McEwen. Together, the women pulled off the amazing feat and won their tournament with 11 wins and no losses. In doing so, they became the second women’s Canadian team to win gold.

Allison Stokke became an online phenomenon not only for her work as a fitness model but for her prowess as a track and field athlete.

Only in high school, she held a number of records in the United States for pole vaulting in her age group. Unfortunately, when it came time to try out for the Olympic team, she fell short of the requirements. Even still, she became a professional vaulter and continued competing at national meetings through 2017.

In 1928, the Olympics became much more open to women. There were plenty of sports that weren’t options before opened up to female competitors.

One such sport was track-and-field which had previously only had a male division. Yet, the first year that they opened the sport to women, Elizabeth Robinson won the first gold. At the time, she was a 16-year-old student in high school, making her win

Women have made great strides in the gymnastics category of the Olympics over the years ever since they were first allowed to compete in 1952.

Up to this point, though, Americans weren’t winning big in gymnastics as the category was most held by Eastern European competitors. Yet, in 1984, Mary Lou Retton took the gold for the all-around competition in the Los Angeles Games. In all, she broke records winning five total medals – the most of any athlete at that time.

Allyson Felix was also a track-and-field competitor. The world first saw her win an Olympic medal in 2004 at the Athens Olympic Games.

After that, she continued to win including another silver in Beijing in 2008 alongside her first gold medal. She later earned three more gold medals in the 2012 London Olympics and one silver and two gold medals in the 2016 Games. In all, she holds nine Olympic medals, a good portion of which are gold.

Now retired, Michelle Kwan was a figure skater for the United States in the Olympics. During her career, she became the most decorated figure skater the country had ever boasted.

She is a dual-medalist in the Olympics, winning silver in 1998 and bronze in 2002. On top of that, she’s a five-time World champion as well as a nine-time U.S. champion. As for the National Championship record, she’s tied for first with Maribel Vinson. In her career, she became one of America’s most popular athletes.

Yuna Kim is a legendary name in Olympic Sports now and the figure skater has even earned the title Queen Yuna while she competes as an athlete from South Korea.

How did she become one of her country’s most revered icons? She worked hard and broke new ground as she became the first female figure skater to not only win medals at the Olympics but the World Champions and Grand Prix Final too. She boasts a gold medal from Vancouver and a silver medal from Sochi.

During the 1976 Olympics, it was Margaret Murdock who made a historical achievement in the category of the rifle competition which was open to both men and women competitors that year.

Despite the fact that no woman had won a medal in the shooting competition in the Olympics yet, Murdock won the silver medal. This made her the first woman to earn a medal in this category of the Olympic games and showed off her impressive skill in the category.

When it comes to women’s swimming in the Olympics and in general, Amanda Beard is an athlete to watch out for. For one, she’s the world record holder in the 200-meter breaststroke.

Further, she’s a highly decorated athlete. Including the Olympics as well as the World Championships, Summer Universiade, and Pan Pacific Championships, she’s won a total of 21 medals. She’s even been named the American Swimmer of the Year two times for her impressive performances.

In 1968, at the Olympics in Grenoble, the United States teams weren’t performing well in any category. In fact, only one athlete won a gold medal that year for the United States.

That athlete was Peggy Fleming who won it for figure skating. Yet, the figure skater was impressive for more than just her talent but her strength. She and all of American figure skating had experienced a loss years before when her old coach and the U.S. figure skating team died in a plane crash.

There’s plenty to be impressed with when it comes to Nadia Comaneci. She was only 14 when she broke monumental records in the 1976 Olympics.

Representing Romania, Comaneci became the first gymnast to finish her routine and receive a score of a perfect 10. This was something she managed to replicate six times that year plus two more perfect scores in the 1980 Summer Olympics. These scores earned her a total of nine Olympic medals including three gold medals.

As we’ve stated, there were plenty of regulations that barred women from performing on the same level as men in the Olympic Games.

In 1912, the first women’s Olympic swim competitions took place. The games took place in Stockholm and it was the team hailing from Great Britain that won gold in the 400-meter race. Countries like the United States failed to join due to the restrictive dress codes that the countries put on women’s teams.

In 1948, there were still plenty of strict limitations on female competitors in the Olympics. That didn’t stop Fanny Blankers-Koen from making history.

By the time the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in 1948 happened, Blankers-Koen won four gold medals. This matched the winnings of Jesse Owens 12 years before. At the time, she also held the world records for long and high jumps but women were limited to three individual events, so she didn’t also compete in these categories.

Even after women were admitted into Olympic competitions, women didn’t start winning medals at the same rates as men right away.

Yet, there was a female athlete that turned the tides for women. In 1952, Maria Gorokhovskaya performed as a Soviet athlete and took home the most medals won by a woman at the Olympics in a single year’s games up to this point including a total of five silver medals and two gold medals.

The athletes in the Olympics have served as an inspiration as they earned new titles and break through barriers. One important slice of representation actually came in 2016 at the Rio Games.

Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh came to the Olympics with the British team to play hockey. They’d played together since they were teenagers and walked onto the international stage as the first out and married lesbian couple to compete. Kate led the team they were on and they even won gold!

An American artists gymnast, there are few people who pay attention to the Olympics that don’t know Simone Biles’ name. She has been on the national team since 2012 but really shined in 2016.

In all, Biles is the holder of 30 total Olympic and World Championship medals, making her the third most decorated gymnast after Vitaly Scherbo and Larisa Latynina. During the 2016 Rio Olympics, she was a part of the team the “Final Five” and won four gold medals and one bronze medal.

There have been plenty of milestones throughout history that are associated with women going against the norm to have the rights that men may not think about exercising every day.

In 1988, at the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Debi Thomas took a step for women that scandalized many. Instead of participating in a traditional skirt, she took to the ice wearing pants. Plus, she won the bronze doing it! Later in life, Thomas took up orthopedic surgery as her new profession.

One of the biggest glass ceilings that a female athlete can break was broken by Madge Syers in 1902 – the ability to join competitions with men at all.

Prior to 1902, the World Figure Skating Championships were considered an all-male event. Madge Syers competed in 1902 and even took home the silver medal. However, it was her competing that prompted the International Skating Union to look over the regulations and create a women’s division for the 1908 Olympic Games.

While the credit for her achievements often gets confused with other competitors, Helene de Pourtalès made great strides for women when she competed in the 1900 Olympic Summer Games.

In Paris, she competed as one of only 22 women allowed to compete in the games. Entering in the sailing competition, she was the only woman on the Switzerland men’s sailing team. Winning both a silver and gold medal, she left the Olympics that year as the very first woman to score a medal.

Simone Manuel made history recently with the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil. At the time, she competed as a swimmer and even took home medals for her efforts.

What really set her apart, though, was that her win was significant enough to set both the American and Olympic records as well as win her gold. With her win, she went down in history as the first African-American woman to set these records and win an individual gold medal for swimming.

Competing for the American team, Wilma Rudolph made history with her Olympic win at the games in both the 1956 Melbourne Games and the 1960 Rome Olympics.

After her performances in these Olympics, she was referred to as the fastest woman in the world. This was thanks to her impressive win as the first American woman to earn three gold medals in one Olympic game in 1956. Thanks to the televised nature of the events, she became an international sensation.

When it comes to competing in Olympic Games, there’s a lot of training, preparation, and dedication that goes into even a single competition.

That’s why it’s all the more impressive that Josefa Idem became the first woman to compete in eight Olympic Games. In 1988, she competed for West Germany and later competed for 1992 and competed for Italy from 1992 to 2012. She competed in the K1-500m even at 48 years old in the 2012 Olympics.

Sometimes, the achievements from the Olympics aren’t left down to one athlete. Sometimes, it’s the efforts of all the athletes working together to break new ground for themselves and future athletes.

In 2016, at the Rio Olympic Games, the women competing made for a historic year not only in headlines but by the numbers too. Of all the medals awarded that year, 44% went to women which was the highest percentage ever. For comparison, only 25% of medals went to women’s events in 1984.

The 2016 Rio Olympic Games were a wild ride full of firsts and impressive athletes. Among them was an American fencer named Ibtihaj Muhammad.

During her competition, she broke barriers as the first woman to compete wearing a hijab. Making the story even more heartwarming, after the Olympics, she partnered up with Mattel to create the first Barbie doll to wear a hijab too! The doll was modeled after her image.

When Alice Coachman broke barriers at the Olympics, it was only 1946. Even better, she broke several barriers all at once with a stunning performance.

Just by competing, she became the first African-American woman to join and compete on the United States Olympic track and field team. When she got to London, she not only won gold but she also set an Olympic record for the high jump event with a total jump measurement of 5 feet and 6 ⅛ inches.

When the modern Olympic Games started in 1896 in Athens, Greece, women did not compete. It was, limited to men’s entries and women’s competitions were called “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and incorrect.”

Women first competed in the Olympics shortly after this, in the 1900 Paris Olympic Games. This included a trio of French women who competed in croquet and a sailor involved in mixed crews. However, not every country allowed women to compete, meaning that there was still a ways to go.