By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Neither Kristin Heaston nor Friba Razayee came close to medals in the Olympics yesterday, but that was completely beside the point as each, in her own way, was responsible for turning a revealing page of history.

Heaston, an American, put the shot in a qualifying round at the dusty stadium in ancient Olympia, a place that has given these games their name. In doing so, she became the first woman to compete on the sun-baked hallowed ground where the games were born more than 2,000 years ago but from which women had been barred — as competitors or spectators — under legendary threat of being tossed headfirst off the cliffs of Mount Typaeum.

Watching as we do, night after night, from our living rooms the performances of women in gymnastics, swimming and a dozen other sports and exulting in their triumphs and sharing their disappointments, we've come to assume that the concept of excluding females was, indeed, some ancient transgression that has long since been rectified.

To watch the brilliance of the unbeaten U.S. women's basketball or softball teams, for example, is to take for granted for many under middle age that women have forever shared a place of prominence amid the five rings.

In disabusing such assumptions, Razayee was a poignant reminder that even in 2004 such change comes slowly and not without some courage. That just because the Olympics admitted women in 1900 not everybody has gotten the message.

Razayee is a judoka from Afghanistan and her match, which lasted less than a minute, was significant not for its lopsided brevity but for finally taking place at all.

She was the first woman from her war-torn homeland to compete in these or any Olympic Games. Along with sprinter Robina Muqimyar, who has yet to compete, they are the only two women in that nation's Olympic delegation and pioneers in their country.

Under the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist until being run out in the weeks following 9/11, women were forcibly bound by their restrictive burkas in sports as in other pursuits.

For Razayee and Muqimyar, concepts such as Title IX and the Amateur Sports Act, laws that are largely responsible for the success female athletes from the U.S. enjoy in international competition, are still unimagined dreams.

Nor, at a time when Saudi Arabia and others had no women in their delegations during the opening ceremonies, are they apparently alone.

For one day, though, Heaston and Razayee, while taking small steps in their events took larger ones for the future of women and the Olympics.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.