SYDNEY — Natalie Williams instinctively bowed her head so Anita DeFrantz, the IOC member from the United States, could hang the gold medal around her neck.
Ho-hum, just another native-born Utahn winning an Olympic gold medal.
The last time it happened, cars were newfangled.
The last time it happened, none of us under 88 were alive.
The last time it happened, women didn't even play basketball in the Olympics. Then again, neither did men.
It was the Stockholm Olympics of Jim Thorpe the last time it happened. It was mid-July in 1912 when Alma Richards of Parowan won the high jump at the Games of the fifth Olympiad and received his gold medal from King Gustav of Sweden, who asked him how he managed to jump so high.
The first native Utahn to win a gold medal in 88 years did not win it passively. Of all the women on the United States women's basketball team Saturday night in the Olympic Super Dome, Natalie Williams of Taylorsville seemed to play with the most determination. She tied for the team lead in scoring with 15 points and was second in rebounds with nine boards. And she didn't even start.
When Williams came into the game with almost eight minutes gone in the opening half, the U.S. had a shaky two-point lead over an Australian team that was so heavily cheered by the sellout house you'd have thought they were playing in a pub.
"Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi" 15,000 voices kept chanting in unison as the Aussie national women's team, nicknamed "The Opals," spurred on by the unofficial Aussie national anthem, hung close at 18-16.
Which is when Natalie took over. In two minutes and 12 seconds she scored five points and grabbed two rebounds and, just like that, the U.S. lead went to eight points, 26-18.
"We had to stifle that crowd," said Natalie. "I did not want them to get close. We could not afford it."
It was as if she knew instinctively how difficult it would be. It was as if she'd heard the rumors about a Utah jinx.
It looked easy when Alma Richards — his teammates called him "Dick" — sailed away to Sweden in 1912 and came home with the gold medal. He was living in Provo at the time, attending school at the Brigham Young Academy, and newspaper clippings show they held a huge celebration in his honor when he returned to the Provo train station. Days before that he'd ridden down Fifth Avenue in New York City alongside Thorpe and the rest of the U.S. team as it was treated to a ticker-tape parade.
Richards hadn't even known such a thing as the Olympics existed just four years earlier. It was a BYU coach named "Timp" Roberts who told him about the Olympics. Richards was a kind of natural talent; he was big (6 feet, 4 inches) and strong and jumping came easy to him.
At Stockholm, he beat Jim Thorpe, among others, to claim his high jump gold medal at a height of 6 feet, 4 inches. Thorpe, of course, would go on to win both the pentathlon and decathlon in Sweden, and become known as the world's greatest athlete.
So Richards was no slouch, and there was no reason to think he wouldn't be merely the first in a long line of native-born Utah Olympic gold medalists.
But that was it.
In the years since, Utahns have excelled in all kinds of Olympic sports, but something always happened to keep gold off our porches. L. Jay Silvester was the world's best discus thrower but never came closer than a silver medal. Blaine Lindgren missed a hurdling gold medal by a photo finish.
Alma Richards might have added more Utah golds in the 1916 Olympics — he'd switched to the decathlon by then and was the American national champion — but the 1916 Olympics never happened. World War I got in the way.
Gene Fullmer and his brothers? Great boxers. But World War II intervened.
Danny Vranes was a member of the U.S. national basketball team that might have claimed gold in Moscow if the U.S. hadn't boycotted the Moscow games.
Denise Parker got a bronze in archery in Seoul in '88 but never came closer.
Here in Sydney, Salt Lake-born Courtney Johnson almost claimed gold just last Wednesday night in the women's water polo final — but Australia's last-second goal relegated her to a silver.
A star-crossed history, to be sure, and one that Natalie Williams knew nothing about.
"Ever heard of Alma Richards?" she was asked Saturday night moments after claiming Utah's second native-born gold medal.
"Who's she?" Natalie responded.
Apprised that Alma Richards was a Parowan rancher who up until Saturday night in Sydney was the only native Utahn to win an Olympic gold medal, and, by the way, he was a man, she said, "Wow! Really!? I'm the first woman!"
"Then I think I've made Utah proud," she said, smiling broadly. "And I think I've got to thank everybody my family, my teachers, my coaches, my friends, everybody back home in Utah who got me started."
She was just a little girl growing up in Taylorsville, she recalled, when she watched the Olympics on TV and decided that's what she wanted to be. An Olympian. She loved Nadia Comaneci, the gymnast, but she really loved Cheryl Miller, the basketball player.
She saw her in the Los Angeles Games in 1984, so smooth, so fluid, so gold.
"I wanted to be like that," she said Saturday night. "I wanted to win a gold medal."
When she finally had it around her neck, she waved to the crowd and hugged her teammates and then stood ramrod-straight for the national anthem.
"I practiced for that during our WNBA games," she said.
"It was everything I dreamed. Everything I ever thought it would be."
"This is it, the ultimate," she said, and it was easy to think it won't be another 88 years for a native Utahn to win a gold medal if Natalie Williams decides she wants a matching set. Four might be more like it.
Lee Benson's column has been running daily during the Sydney Olympics. Please e-mail him at benson@desnews.com