Sisters in sports Athens draws largest percentage of women competitors in Games history: Mia Hamm, Marion Jones and Jenny Thompson are about to join thousands of women athletes in doing something their "sisters" couldn't do 108 years ago in Athens.

They are going to compete in the Olympics. When the Games were "revived" in 1896 in the capital of Greece, women were not allowed to participate. It was even worse for women during the ancient Greek Games. Then, they not only could not compete but also risked punishment of death if they dared to be spectators, because male athletes performed in the nude. But these are not your ancestor's Olympics. In the 2004 Games, the largest percentage of women athletes in Olympic history will be competing. A women's soccer match between Greece and the United States will kick off the Games on Wednesday, even before Friday's opening ceremony. The International Olympic Committee estimates that 44 percent of the approximately 11,000 competitors in Athens will be women; official numbers will be compiled at the completion of the Games. "Within a decade," Olympic committee president Jacques Rogge predicts, "there will be 50 percent women participating at the Olympics." Even Afghanistan, which was barred from the Sydney Games because of the Taliban's treatment of women, will send a 10-member delegation with three women. An Iraqi woman will compete in track and field. Almost a quarter-century ago, at the U.S.-boycotted 1980 Games in Moscow, just 21 percent of the athletes were women. In Sydney, only four years ago, the percentage was 38.2. Societal attitudes about women, increased cultural and fiscal development throughout the world and a steady, if slow, change in mind-set by the Olympic committee have led to the higher percentages. The sheer determination of female athletes has not hurt the cause, either. More sports In the past eight years, the Summer Games have added women's competition in soccer, softball, weightlifting, pole vault and hammer throw. Women's wrestling is making its debut in Athens. Longtime U.S. soccer standout Julie Foudy, a past president of the Women's Sports Foundation, said the attention given women in the Olympics and the Women's World Cup has greatly changed her sport. "It's finally starting to be culturally accepted," said Foudy, in her third Olympics. "We've seen places that, traditionally, didn't promote women's soccer (and now) are funding it. I mean, Mexico being in the Olympics for the first time is a great example. They're now funding a women's program and spending a lot of energy and money on the youth programs as well for girls." The Olympics have provided women athletes with a major world stage-even as they have faced obstacles. "Pioneers have lonely journeys, and they're breaking barriers and myths that other people have not dared tread upon," said Madeline Manning Mims, who won the 1968 Olympic gold for the United States in the 800 meters when that was the longest distance women ran in the Games. "But it comes out to be for the good of everyone." Steady improvement The last 30 years have, indeed, represented steady improvement. Women's basketball, which made its Olympic debut in 1976, was such a popular draw in 1996 that it energized the beginning of two U.S.-based professional leagues. The Frenchman who founded the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, couldn't have imagined such a thing. In the 1890s, he urged the revival of the ancient Olympics as a way to promote peace among nations. He was the head of the International Olympic Committee for 26 years. Yet he was also short-sighted enough to adamantly oppose the inclusion of women, who got in despite his protests. In 1896 no women were allowed in the Games-yet two Greek women ran the marathon course. One, Stamatis Rovithi, completed it before the Olympics. The other, named only Melpomene, tried to become an entrant, was denied but ran the race anyway. When she arrived at Olympic stadium some four hours later, she wasn't allowed inside for the final lap-so she ran one around the outside of the structure. It was almost a century later, in 1984, before the women's marathon became an Olympic event. Early events The first "official" female Olympians were in 1900, and for many years it was recorded that they participated only in tennis and golf. Researchers, though, have found that women also competed in equestrian, croquet, sailing and . . . ballooning. The 1908 Games in London included sports for men and women, such as figure skating, although some events would move to the Winter Olympics when they began in 1924. The unofficial start to the women's Olympic era was in 1912, when they were allowed to compete in swimming. Women's track and field began in 1928. In their book A Proper Spectacle: Women Olympians 1900 to 1936, British authors Anita Tedder and Stephanie Daniels exposed a long-held myth-that women could not run distance races-as propagated by yet another myth. Track setbacks Newspapers of the time reported that several women collapsed at the end of track's 800 meters at the 1928 Games. Because of that, no race farther than 200 meters was offered again to women in the Olympics until 1960, when the 800 was revived. The Olympic committee after the 1928 Games even considered reinstating a ban on female Olympians. Tedder and Daniels viewed archival footage of the 800 and discovered, in fact, that only one woman collapsed-because of injury, not exhaustion. Further, they found that the London Daily Mail printed photographs of "sobbing girls," none of whom had actually competed in the 800, and stated the race was "too much strain" on women. In spite of such setbacks, participation in the Olympics continued to grow in the 1950s and the 1960s. It was a strange juxtaposition: sprinting gold medalist Wilma Rudolph became world famous in the 1960 Rome Games - yet a high school girl at that time had few options to compete in individual sports and even fewer for team sports. Rudolph's success was part of a larger story that proved to be a microcosm for the progress and pains of women in the Olympics. She ran for Tennessee State, one of three schools in the United States in the early 1950s-the others were Hawaii and Tuskegee Institute in Alabama-that offered financial assistance to female athletes attending college. Tennessee State did not have "athletic scholarships" per se. Athletes worked on campus at least two hours a day for room, board and tuition. The historically black university left a mark on track and field like no other college. Nicknamed the Tigerbelles, Tennessee State's women won 23 Olympic medals from 1956 to 1984. The passage of Title IX in 1972 and the NCAA taking over governance of women's sports in 1981 permanently altered the landscape for women's sports in the United States. But the Tigerbelles' legacy remains. Many of them gathered at the Olympic track trials in Sacramento, Calif., last month to celebrate the U.S. Postal Service issuing a stamp commemorating Rudolph, who died in 1994. "Here were a group of women that, if anybody would have been laying money on it, wouldn't have been expected to make it," said former Tigerbelle Wyomia Tyus, who won the Olympic 100 meters in 1964 and '68. "We were black. But 40 of us went to the Olympics, and we all graduated from college. People talk about what can young people today grab onto. This is something they can look at. Through athletics, we got an education and traveled the world." Much to be done Despite the progress, many agree that much is left to be done. To further increase the percentage of female athletes in the Games, the Olympic committee will have to continue its policies of adding women's sports and classification within sports, plus providing incentive for countries to boost their women's programs. Many also think women's representation must increase on governing bodies-including the Olympic committee - for all international sports. The third World Conference of Women and Sport, held in Edmonton in 2002, found that the number of national organizing Committees with women on their executive boards had increased from 33 in 1998 to 138 in 2002. The president of the Athens Organizing Committee, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, is a woman. But, by and large, women remain outnumbered by men in positions of power.