A walk in Australia, a walk in Iowa — and big steps for women’s sports

However you might define or interpret the moment of respect for the female athlete, the planet has reached one wowing juncture. It’s that point at which for some sporting events, you can’t really even tell which gender of sporting competition the people are walking and stirring and craving to see. The walks look the same, feel the same, sound the same, as if the buzzes have merged ideally.

It can feel as if a new generation has slid in quietly but unmistakably, and it’s full of people who lack the fear of powerful women — even those with some cheek, such as Clark, cupping her ear to the crowd after another picturesque assist. It’s an era of people who like sports, not just certain sports. It’s the generation in which male basketball stars such as Paolo Banchero or Victor Wembanyama start to arrive with their basketball-star mothers as first architects of their games. It’s one in which a magic-maker with three-point audacity comes whirling out of West Des Moines, and soon every-other-body seems to have the name Clark — the very young, the young, the middle-aged, the old.

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