My first acquaintance with a real sportswoman
happened when I met Pancho
Barnes who was already a legend when I met her. Assigned to the Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base,
it didn't take me long to discover Pancho’s ranch, The Happy Bottom
Riding Club.
A mutual fondness had grown between Pancho and
famous test pilots like Chuck Yeager.
Her legendary fame derived from her record as one of the first
women stunt pilots. She
had flown with Amelia Earhart in numerous air shows, survived a
near-fatal crash and built her own landing strip in the Mohave Desert.
I found myself totally enchanted listening to the
tales that had made her a legend; and she liked this young airman who
listened so avidly to the recounting of her experiences.
Though she was much older than I, we became close friends
during my three years at Edwards Air Force Base.
Despite having been married to a preacher,
Pancho’s language sounded as earthy and unholy as any you might hear
in a men's locker room. Her
sense of humour, even after a plane crash that nearly killed her and
left her scarred from burns, seemed quite incredible.
Added to that, she had survived four marriages to men who
couldn't keep up with her.
Pancho's
love of flying took precedence over everything else--her men, her
club, her friends and her ranch.
One lesson I learned from Pancho, borne out by every other
successful sportswoman I've known, or known much about, has been that
the sporting activity of a successful female athlete comes before
everything else. That
involves sacrifices that most are not willing to make, or at least not
willing to make for long.
Pancho and a group of about 8 female stunt pilots
had competed in a sport previously an exclusive men’s province, and
the best male pilots in the world loved her for it.
Yet, according to Liz Taplin, "Sport generates more gender
divisions than almost any other sector of our modern society. So who's
to blame? The authorities? The media? Or us? The prosecution cases are
practically endless."
Up to the age of eleven, most sport is mixed. Until
then, there is little difference between the genders in terms of
strength and speed. Then, as soon as we reach our teens, the genders
tend to separate; and as we move into adulthood, most examples of
mixed sport become increasingly more social, rather than competitive.
Mixed events in tennis and hockey, for example, though hotly
contested, are generally seen as a pleasant diversion from the more
serious single-sex competitions.
There are myriad instances of men playing against
women to prove a point, to draw attention to their sport, or to simply
entertain the public. Some time ago, tennis star Billie Jean King set
the ball rolling when she beat Bobby Riggs in an exhibition match. And
more recently, a team representing the Women's European Golf Tour beat
a team from the Senior Men's Tour.
One
sport that young women excel in, and which seems to have been designed
to challenge both their sportsmanship and their feminine grace, is
gymnastics.
In certain sports, however, men and women do
compete on an equal footing. Equestrianism is a classic example. The
top competitors have the utmost respect for each other and the women
often outride the men.
In long distance swimming, too, women are forever
edging closer to the men, and many experts feel that it is only a
matter of time before the same trend starts to appear with marathon
running.
At the first modern Olympics in 1896, Melpomene
became the first female to compete, although unofficially, in the
games. Women have made much advancement in the Olympic games over
the past 100 years.
American athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias earned
more medals, broke
more records, and swept more tournaments in more
sports than any other athlete, male or female, in the twentieth
century. She played forward with the Golden Cyclone Squad, one of the
best girls' basketball teams in the country.
At the 1932 Olympics she won gold medals in javelin
throwing, 80-meter hurdles, and the high jump. From 1940 to 1950 she
won every available golf title. In 1945 she was named Woman Athlete of
the Year by a unanimous poll of Associated Press sportswriters. In
1956 she became the first winner of the American pro-golf title.
Women
have been distinguishing themselves in Olympic sports ever
since. They've excelled in field and track, swimming, tennis,
gymnastics and golf. In winter sports, women have recorded
outstanding performances in skiing, sledding, skating and ice-hockey.
For those interested in some useful Web sites
related to women’s sports:
Fact
Monster is an online almanac of women in sports with links to each
of 25 major sports and an additional nine minor ones.
They also include the brief and interesting histories of the
Associated Press Female Athletes of the Year since 1931.
CNN
Sports
Illustrated carries the latest news about women's athletics.
Current scoreboards are available for all women's sports.
Female athletes provide an excellent example of at
least half of what Susan Sontag referred to when she wrote, “What is
most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most
beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”
