Where are all the women?

LITTLE ROCK — Every four years we tune in to watch men and women showcase spectacular athleticism over a host of somewhat banal courses - a track, a swimming pool, a target range. No gridiron with uprights. No skidmarked racecourse. No pretty ballpark.

Still, it’s all so exciting!

Not the events. The women.

In the world of televised sports, only women’s tennis approximates the viewership of its male counterpart: More than 2.3 million American households tuned in earlier this month to ESPN to watch the Wimbledon women’s final; under 2.9 million tuned in for the men’s final. It’s why Serena and Venus Williams are household names, Diana Taurasi, Abby Wambach, and Paula Creamer - the stars of basketball, soccer and golf, respectively - are not.

Women’s professional basketball attracts about 500,000 viewers, and then, only during league finals. Women’s professional soccer canceled its 2012 season. The Ladies Professional Golf Association is rarely televised anywhere other than the Golf channel.

Yet, when NBC aired its 30 Greatest NBC Olympic Moments special July 21, the No. 1 most beloved moment was Kerri Strug, snapping her ankle but sticking the landing of the vault routine that propelled the squad to an overall gold in 1996. The countdown was viewer-generated, and while Michael Phelps filled the starring role - face it, he was kind of a big deal last time - it was a girl, a little girl, that we all remember most fondly.

REAL HOUSE HUSBANDS OF TV LAND

Before these Olympics, the 50 most-watched sports events this year so far have included only one featuring female athletes - the U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials. That was watched by about 10 million Americans (the Super Bowl, at 111 million, was first, while the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in Talladega, at 8.35 million, was 50th).

There are two ways to wonder about women, sports and TV. How come watching women compete isn’t more popular in this country, where school-age girls have just as much access to sports as boys? (Incidentally, it’s the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the law that gave girls that access.)

Or, how come the Olympics is such a ratings bonanza for women where else where it’s tumbleweeds?

Turns out, there’s a lot of theories for why women’s professional sports aren’t more popular. Too many for this column. But there are two good reasons for why women’s Olympic events are one-offs in the world of televised sports.

The first is that female Olympians perform just a shade behind the men, with little visual contrast.

The fastest man in Olympics history is Usain Bolt, who ran a 9.69-second 100-meter in 2008. The fastest woman was Florence Griffith-Joyner, who came within one second of that in 1988. Similarly, Michael Phelps broke an Olympic record when he won gold in Beijing in the 200-meter freestyle with a time of 1:42:96, but Italian Federica Pellegrini also broke the Olympic record in the same event for women. Her time was 1:54:82. The difference between the men’s and women’s sprinting record is just under 10 percent; between the swimming records, 11.5 percent.

This is a favorable comparison to women, especially in light of other sports such as basketball, where distaff players struggle to dunk a ball with the same frequency - not to mention soaring choreography and finishing power - as men, or in tennis, where a particularly strong service speed for a man well exceeds 150 mph but no woman has ever broken 130.

So, for many of us wholly unaccustomed to throwing a javelin or leaping a bar set seven feet high, watching the world’s best women accomplish these feats is hardly less impressive than a man accomplishing the same feats.

OUR GIRLS ARE BETTER

But here’s another reason American women get level airtime in the Olympic games: much of the Olympic storyline is chauvinism. In other words, the ongoing battle of the flags, the specter of our guys and gals whipping the pants off those old Eastern Bloc countries, or communist China, or Ethiopia. OK, maybe not Ethiopia.

Where U.S. pride is concerned, our women best their women more often than our men best their men.

This is especially true in basketball, baseball/softball (no longer part of the Games, as of this year), soccer and gymnastics, some of the events with the highest television ratings. Here’s a list of the number of gold medals won by women and men, by sport, over the last four Olympics:

Basketball: Women, 4 of 4 gold medals; men, 3 of 4.

Baseball/softball: Women, 3 of 4 gold medals; men, 1 of 4.

Soccer: Women, 3 of 4 gold medals; men, none.

Gymnastics (all-around): Women, 2 of 4; men, 1 of 4.

So whether it’s Claressa Shields of Flint, Mich., the 17-year-old medal hopeful in women’s middleweight boxing; or Hope Solo, goal tender for the vaunted women’s soccer squad; or Margaux Isaksen of Fayetteville, who competes in the very last scheduled competition in this 30th Olympiad, the Modern Pentathalon - what we’re seeing and hoping for isn’t the same.

Visually, they are all stunning athletes, but we hope they’re victors among the vanquished.