Alex Morgan and Sue Bird are looking back at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta for a new project. They are serving as executive producers on a six-part documentary series, Summer of Gold. They will fulfill this role while working with their company, TOGETHXR, and the podcast network Dear Media.
Summer of Gold will highlight how 1996 was a monumental year for women’s sports. The series will highlight the “Magnificent Seven,” the first-ever gymnastics team to win the Olympic gold for the United States. The podcast series will also highlight the first wave of Title IX athletes entering the Games, the USA women’s basketball, soccer and softball teams all taking home the gold, and David Stern founding the WNBA.
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The new podcast series will launch in the late spring. Morgan and Bird will executive produce while also participating in the series. Summer of Gold will also feature several yet-to-be-revealed pop culture icons and important figures from the 1996 Olympic Games.
“The summer of ’96 is one of the most, if not the most, important moments in women’s sports history,” said Jessica Robertson, TOGETHXR’s Chief Content Officer, as reported by Deadline. “All those women who represented the United States in the Atlanta Games were first-generation Title IX-ers. It was also the summer that the WNBA was founded. More importantly, that summer sat right alongside a larger cultural ‘girl power’ movement.
“As much as this is a sports story, it’s also a story about girl power in the mid to late-nineties,” Robertson continued. “Because of that cultural context, the ’96 Olympic Games turned women athletes not just into sports icons but culture icons. It was a critical ‘see it be it’ moment for so many women of this generation. As we look to Tokyo 2021, we’ll celebrate that past through this narrative podcast, but we’ll also revisit it and have a reckoning with how far we’ve come and how far we have to go.”
TOGETHXR is a new media and commerce company founded by Morgan, Bird, snowboarder Chloe Kim, and swimmer Simone Manuel. The company, specifically created for Gen Z and young Millennial women, launched on March 2. According to the announcement, TOGETHXR will celebrate “competitiveness and triumph broadly, incorporating activism, culture, wellness, fashion, design, beauty, and more.”
Since launching, TOGETHXR has already begun work on multiple series. One example is, More Than A Name, which follows women who carry the weight of legendary family names while trying to chase their own greatness. The first episode features Maya Brady, a second baseman for UCLA’s softball team and the niece of both Tom Brady and MLB star Kevin Youkilis.
