Felix, Serena go into Team USA HoF along with an icon who paved the way for women: Anita DeFrantz

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – In some ways, one of the longest-serving members of the International Olympic Committee, Anita DeFrantz, paved the way for the new president of the IOC, Kirsty Coventry, to get to where she is today.

That why Coventry, the first female leader of the IOC, pulled a big surprise Saturday. She traveled to Colorado Springs to watch DeFrantz, a trailblazing Olympic rower in 1976 and IOC member since 1986, get inducted into the Team USA Hall of Fame.

“She opened up so many doors, for me and for so many others,” said Coventry, who took over as president last month, in an interview with The Associated Press before the ceremony. “I’m extremely grateful for that. I know that I’ve got to make sure I do that for other women.”

The 72-year-old DeFrantz is part of a class that includes eight individual women – among them 11-time Olympic medalist Allyson Felix, four-time Olympic champion Serena Williams, three-time Olympic champion Kerri Walsh Jennings and 2012 all-around gymnastics champion Gabby Douglas.

Also inducted Saturday were Bode Miller, Mike Krzyzewski, Phil Knight, Steve Cash, Susan Hagel, Flo Hyman and Marla Runyan, along with the 2010 four-man bobsled team and the 2004 women’s wheelchair basketball team.

Coventry showed up for DeFrantz, who played an important role in moving votes toward the five-time Olympic swimmer from Zimbabwe in the seven-person race to succeed Thomas Bach earlier this year.

This was one of Coventry’s first big – albeit low-key – trips in the new role, and DeFrantz was shocked to see the new president standing there as she got out of her car to head into the ceremony at the Broadmoor.

DeFrantz described herself as a little lonely when she went to her first IOC meeting in 1986.

“I walked in and I thought, ‘This is odd,'” she said. “It was this cavernous room” and she was one of only five female committee members there.

One of her main goals in becoming a shaper of world sports policy: “We had to help people open their minds a little.”

While, in some ways, the Olympics has been ahead of its time in the effort to bring women into big-time sports – 22 women participated in the 1900 Olympics while, for instance, it took until 1981 for the NCAA to sanction women’s basketball – it has also shined a global spotlight on some inequities that have existed for decades.

Women’s rowing didn’t debut at the Games until the 1976 Olympics where DeFrantz and her teammates won bronze. Only last year did the Olympics achieve gender parity, with women making up half of the approximately 10,500 athletes, according to the IOC.

DeFrantz, a vice president of the 1984 LA organizing committee, helped spark that progress. She served as chair of the IOC’s women in sport commission for 20 years. She became a member of the IOC executive board in 1992 and was elected as the IOC’s first female vice president in 1997.

A generation later, Felix began her own fight to highlight the way women were treated when they became pregnant. She forced a seismic change in contract terms that, for decades, had given little leeway to female track stars who put careers on hold to have babies.

Felix is now a member of the IOC, as well – following in the footsteps of both DeFrantz and Coventry as Olympic athletes who now have seats at the decision-making table.

“I feel really blessed to come after Anita and I’ve told her this many times, she has paved the way,” Felix said. “She’s a game-changer. Just what she’s seen and contributed to is incredible. For someone like me, it’s just wanting to carry on her legacy.”

DeFrantz’s honor comes at yet another tenuous time for women in sports, punctuated by headline-grabbing debates about eligibility and gender testing in track, boxing, swimming and other sports that will likely bring leaders like Coventry and DeFrantz into the mix.

Coventry said it’s important to “protect the female category,” and has signaled that the IOC will take a more active role in setting guidelines for participation.

But for the 41-year-old president, this was a night for celebrating a mentor who made her role in today’s debates possible.

“It’s all about letting people have opportunities,” DeFrantz said. “You can’t make an Olympian. But you can open the door to possibilities.”