 | Patricia Miranda |
Patricia Miranda's years of determination and refusal to quit in the face of ridicule and humiliation paid off for the first-year law student on Aug. 23, when she became the first woman ever to win an Olympic medal for women's wrestling at the 2004 Athens Games.
Miranda, who competed in the 48kg class bout, is the second Yale student to win an Olympic medal in this summer's competition. Yale College senior Sada Jacobson also made history in Athens by becoming the first women's saber competitor to win a medal in the international games, also taking home a bronze medal.
The five-foot, 105-pound Miranda defeated France's Angelique Berthenet 12-4 to win the bronze. Considered a favorite for the gold medal, she had lost her semifinal match the day before to three-time world champion Irini Merlini of the Ukraine. This is the first year that women's wrestling was an Olympic event.
The six-minute bronze medal match was the culmination of years of hard work for Miranda, who began wrestling in eighth grade as the only female member of her middle school team. Taunted by teammates, classmates and even strangers, she refused to give up the sport she loved even though she lost frequently to her male counterparts as a member of the men's team at Saratoga High School in California.
Undaunted, Miranda continued to wrestle as an undergraduate at Stanford University, where she was the sole female on the men's varsity team and lost more matches than she won. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in international relations from Stanford.
Currently the top-ranked female U.S. wrestler in her weight class, Miranda's desire to excel in her sport eventually earned her the gold medal in the Pan American Games and a gold medal in the 2003 World Cup. She was a two-time silver medalist in the World Championships, in 2000 and again in 2003.
In a recent USA Today article, Miranda's coach, Terry Steiner, was quoted as saying, "Wrestling is wrestling. That's what I've said to some of the naysayers, college coaches and stuff like that. I just said, 'If you had Patricia Miranda in your room for a month, you'd change your attitude about women's wrestling.' ... If she's not what the Olympics are all about, I'm missing the boat."
The last Yale affiliate to finish her sport at the Olympic games, runner Kate O'Neill '03, competed in the 10K race on Aug. 27. O'Neill, an All-American who broke a number of Yale records as a member of the track team, finished 21st in her Olympic Stadium race. China's Huina Xing came in first, followed by Ejegahehu Dibaba of Ethiopa and Derartu Tulu, also of Ethiopa.
O'Neill has been working for the University's Office of Development while training for the Olympics with Yale track and cross country coach Mark Young, who accompanied her to Athens.
An earlier story about Yale's Olympians can be found at www.yale.edu/opa/v33.n1/story1.html.
T H I S
Law student makes wrestling history as first woman to win Olympic medal in the sport
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