Since the NCAA women’s basketball tournament final on Sunday drew more US television viewers than the men’s final for the first time in history, it has been hailed as a watershed moment for women’s sports in America. A vanguard of star players including Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, LSU’s Angel Reese and Southern California’s JuJu Watkins have lifted the profile of the women’s game to unprecedented heights over the past few months while recalibrating expectations for how all women’s sports can be covered, commercialised and consumed.
But none of them have commanded the national consciousness quite like Caitlin Clark, the ponytailed once-in-a-generation talent from the University of Iowa whose modest 6ft frame belies her outsized impact on college basketball and American sports at large.
