Yes you do, or you can't tell whether typical media sources are covering this more or less.

Here's the coverage by the New York Times alone of Marion Jones alone: https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/marion-jones

Lia Thomas has--according to a Google search of NY Times articles, because the Times hasn't created its own index of articles on Thomas--received less than half the coverage than Jones did in the first year.

As a general rule of thumb, if you're comparing X to Y, you need to know about X, and you also need to know about Y.