Cogdell-Unrein was on target in Rio, but a newspaper misfired

Corey Cogdell-Unrein's Olympic bronze medal in trapshooting was big news in Alaska.

She learned to shoot as a toddler in Chickaloon, where her targets were spruce hens and tin cans. When she was 4 her family moved to Eagle River, where she and her sister Tanis were home-schooled and Corey joined a 4-H club to pursue her love of shooting. So a lot of Alaskans celebrated Sunday when Cogdell-Unrein collected her second Olympic medal.

Cogdell-Unrein's medal was also big news in Chicago, where husband Mitch Unrein is a defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears. And the way her achievement was initially reported Sunday by the Chicago Tribune became news of another sort.

The Tribune created an uproar by tweeting "Wife of a Bears' lineman wins a bronze medal today in Rio Olympics."

Twitter users railed against the newspaper for what many viewed as a sexist headline.

"If winning her own Olympic medal doesn't get a woman her own headline, what will?!" wrote one.

"Congrats to that Bear's lineman who apparently deserves all the credit here," said another.

"Bill Clinton Back in White House, Brings Wife," mocked another.

The Tribune apologized for the tweet, saying it had "focused too hard on trying to emphasize the local connection Cogdell-Unrein has to Chicago."

On Monday, Cogdell-Unrein told Excelle Sports she hadn't heard about the controversy until Mitch Unrein, who's in Chicago for the Bears' training camp, told her about it.

"My husband actually texted me and said, 'Have you seen what's been going on on social media?' '' Cogdell-Unrein told the website. "I honestly haven't really had much time to be part of the conversation, but I definitely understand where people are coming from and I can definitely see how they would be upset that my name wasn't mentioned."

NBC has also been slammed for what some see as sexist remarks during the Rio Olympics, where women are competing in a record 28 sports and make up 45 percent of the total number of athletes.

Women outnumber the men on Team USA, 292 to 263. Of the 24 medals won by the United States through Tuesday, half were collected by women, including five of the eight gold medals.

Yet early in the Games NBC implied that women don't follow sports: "The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans. More women watch the Games than men, and for the women, they're less interested in the result and more interested in the journey."

NBC broadcaster Dan Hicks provoked more outrage after Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu broke the world record in the women's 400-meter individual medley. Hicks called Shane Tusup, Hosszu's husband and coach, "the guy responsible" for the gold-medal victory.

Hicks responded to criticism by saying you don't always say what you mean to say on live TV. And he defended his remark, saying you can't tell Hosszu's story without mentioning the impact Tusup has had on her training.

Cogdell-Unrein, a 29-year-old from Eagle River, won her first Olympic bronze medal in 2008, more than two years before she met Mitch Unrein. Over the years she has become one of the country's most decorated trapshooters.

In her interview with Excelle, Cogdell-Unrein said women should be "recognized for our own accomplishments and attributes outside of who we're married to or what our husbands or significant others have accomplished."

"… I appreciate everyone standing up for me, for sure," she said, "and I'm very proud of the things that I've accomplished on my own."