Legendary Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi will seek their fifth consecutive gold medal at Tokyo-2020 with the United States women’s basketball team.
Winners of four golds each, in Athens-2004, Beijing-2008, London-2012 and Rio de Janeiro-2016, Bird and Taurasi lead Team USA, as disclosed this Monday, which is trained by Dawn Staley and in which six of its twelve players will debut in Tokyo at the Olympics.
Bird, 40, who plays in the Seattle Storm of the WNBA, and Taurasi, 39, who defends Phoenix Mercury also in the North American League, will have the company of triple Olympic champion Sylvia Fowles and triple world champion Tina Charles. .
Brittney Griner and Breanna Stewart, both world champions and Olympic gold winners in Rio de Janeiro-2016, will also be part of Team USA.
Two other world champions seeking their first Olympic title make up the team, Jewell Loyd and A’ja Wilson, as well as four rookies: Ariel Atkins, Napheesa Collier, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Chelsea Gray.
The United States team has 49 consecutive victories in the Olympic Games, since the bronze medal dispute in Barcelona-1992.
In the entire history of women’s basketball at the Olympic Games, the United States has 66 wins and 3 losses and has won eight of the last nine gold medals contested.
In case of winning its seventh consecutive gold, a streak that began at the Centennial Games in Atlanta-1996, the women’s team will equal the record set by its men’s pair that won seven Olympic titles in a row between Berlin-1936 and Mexico-1968.
The Americans qualified for Tokyo-2020 by winning the 2018 World Cup, their third consecutive world title and fifth in six editions of the tournament.
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