When the Team USA list for the women’s national team was announced, Caitlin Clark’s name was a glaring omission from the 2024 Olympics roster. Even though she was only a rookie in the WNBA, fans believed her college accolades — and name recognition — should have earned her a spot. “I know it’s the most competitive team in the world and I know it could’ve gone either way of me being on the team, me not being on the team,” Clark said on June 9, per NBC News. “Hopefully one day I can be there.”
Clark took a diplomatic approach to not being able to represent her country, but others came to her defense with less nuanced takes. “Rant incoming. — leaving Caitlin Clark off the women’s Olympic team is the dumbest s*** I’ve ever heard,” Barstool’s Dave Portnoy wrote on X on June 8. Controversial sports columnist Jason Whitlock had a blisteringly hot take of his own. “Caitlin Clark’s Olympic Dream Killed as WNBA Chooses Bigotry over Business,” Whitlock titled a YouTube video posted June 10.
It was not only fans and incendiary media members who took issue with Clark being left off the Olympic squad. “I think it’s a missed opportunity because she’s clearly a generational talent at a time when the world was ready for it,” Casey Wasserman, president of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, told USA Today on June 22. As you can see, through no fault of her own, Clark’s early career was shrouded in controversy.
