Awesome Female Athletes Who Took over the Sports World
There's no shortage of iconic female athletes, past and present, who more than qualify as stars. Despite the competitive achievements and progress outside the lines, it would be a tough position to defend if you believed sports don't remain a world dominated by men.
However, some women have broken through and become so much more than just star athletes but rather individuals who transcend their sport—and whose story was front-page material as well as a top story in sports.
How each woman became one of the biggest stories in sports is often as compelling and unexpected as the person herself.
Some simply proved themselves to be a once and a lifetime athlete on an international stage; others suddenly found their career and life intertwined in the kind of jaw-dropping moment that people talk about for decades.
These are awesome female athletes who took over the sports world.
Billie Jean King
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Over the course of her career, which spanned nearly two decades, tennis great Billie Jean King won a total of 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 U.S. titles, four French titles and two Australian titles. She is best know, however, for the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” match against Bobby Riggs.
The 55-year-old Riggs had been openly critical of the women’s game and challenged King to a match more than once before she finally accepted. Though she worried about the impact a loss could have potentially had on the women’s movement, King didn’t let fear deter her and went on to defeat Riggs.
Florence Griffith Joyner
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Florence Griffith Joyner, also known as Flo-Jo, was a track and field superstar at UCLA before graduating in 1982. After finishing fourth at the 1983 World Championship in Athletics, Flo-Jo won silver in the 200-meter dash at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. In addition to her success on the track, Joyner’s flashy style, which included six-inch long fingernails and form-fitting bodysuits, played a significant role in her celebrity status.
At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Joyner won gold in both the 100-meter dash and 200-meter dash, the 4x100-meter relay and took silver in the 4x400-meter relay. During that period of time she set a record in the 100-meter dash that still stands today. Although Flo-Jo died suddenly and unexpectedly of an epileptic seizure in 1998, she remains the fastest woman of all time.
Picabo Street
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Picabo Street rose to prominence in 1988 when she won both the national junior downhill and super-G skiing titles at the tender age of 16. Her early success and infectious smile, not to mention a really outside the box name, both contributed to her superstardom in the '90s.
In addition to medaling regularly in international competitions, Street took silver in the downhill event at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer and earned gold in super-G at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano. She was one of the most popular female athletes in the U.S. throughout the decade and made frequent appearances as herself on shows like American Gladiators and Nickelodeon Guts.
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Monica Seles
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In 1990 Monica Seles was a tennis star on the rise. That year she defeated the legendary Steffi Graf at the French Open, making her the youngest Grand Slam winner in history at the age of 16. A year later the 17-year-old Seles became the youngest player ever to earn the No. 1 rank in the world.
Then in 1993 tragedy struck when Seles was stabbed in the back by a deranged man wielding a nine-inch knife who attacked her on the court—he was an obsessed fan of Graf’s. Though she would return to the game two years later, Seles never quite recaptured the magic of her early days and only won one more Grand Slam before retiring in 2003.
Nancy Kerrigan
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After earning nothing but silver and bronze in international competition, including a bronze in women’s singles at the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was already receiving plenty of attention as the gold medal favorite in the months leading up to the 1994 Lillehammer Games.
That January she was attacked by an assailant at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in a plot that was later revealed to involve rival Tonya Harding. The bizarre story captured the world’s attention, with drama building for weeks before reaching it’s peak in Lillehammer, where Kerrigan and Harding would both compete.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
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Widely regarded as the greatest female athlete of all time, track and field great Jackie Joyner-Kersee shot to superstardom in 1987. That year she was named the AP Female Athlete of the Year and became the first woman to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated in a non-swimsuit capacity.
Joyner-Kersee continued her ascension for years, winning two gold medals at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and a gold and bronze at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. She earned the bronze in long jump in Atlanta in 1996 before failing to make the team four years later.
Gabrielle Reece
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In the '90s beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece became one of the first female athletes of the modern era—one who was 50 percent athlete and 50 percent personal brand. She had great success in modeling early on, and as a sophomore at Florida State Elle magazine named her one of “The Five Most Beautiful Women in the World.”
Reece gave up modeling to focus on volleyball not long after college but still found plenty of work that kept her in the spotlight. She hosted programs for a number of networks, including NBC’s Gravity Games and a two-year stretch with MTV Sports. Though she has settled into family life since marrying surfer Laird Hamilton in 1997, Reece was the biggest female sports star of the decade.
Kerri Strug
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Although the entire U.S. women’s gymnastics team stunned the world by winning team gold at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, nearly two decades later the performance of Kerri Strug is still what most people remember as the defining moment of the games.
With gold on the line and Strug having injured her ankle on the first of two vaults, she famously powered through the second vault and did so well enough to clinch it for the U.S. After the Olympics, Strug was so in demand that she spent the next six months making TV appearances before things finally settled down.
Mia Hamm
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The career of U.S. women’s soccer great Mia Hamm spanned nearly two decades, and she is widely regarded as the best female soccer player in history. At the time of her retirement she held the record for international career goals, before being surpassed by former teammate Abby Wambach in 2013.
Hamm was named to the U.S. women’s national team in 1987, but her star really began to rise with a Women’s World Cup victory in 1991—she was a certified superstar when they won again in 1999. Hamm also won gold with the team at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
Serena Williams
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Jackie Joyner-Kersee may be considered the greatest female athlete of all time, but there’s no question that tennis great Serena Williams has been making her own case since turning pro in 1995. Early on she shared the spotlight with sister Venus, but Serena has really separated herself from her sister over the course of her career.
With 18 Grand Slams (30 including doubles) and counting, Williams' most recent victory came at the 2014 U.S. Open, which puts her just four behind Steffi Graf’s record of 22. In addition to her greatness on the court, Williams’ flair for fashion and occasionally combative nature have made her a star even outside the world of tennis.
Michelle Wie
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Golfer Michelle Wie became in instant sensation in 2003 when, at age 13, she became the youngest player ever to win a USGA event at the Women’s Amateur Public Links. One year later she made history again at the Sony Open in Hawaii as the youngest player ever, and just the fourth female, to play in a PGA event.
Wie officially turned pro in 2005 and joined the LPGA Tour full time in 2009. Despite such impressive early achievements, Wie, who is now 24 years old, was still in search of her first major win until just recently. In June 2014 she put her struggles from recent years behind her with a big win at the U.S. Women’s Open.
Danica Patrick
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Danica Patrick burst onto the racing scene as the 2005 Indianapolis Rookie of the Year. She only won one IndyCar race through 2011 but was the most popular driver in the series over that period of time. She has since moved on to NASCAR Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series racing.
Patrick’s lack of race wins has made her a lightning rod for criticism over the years, but her good looks and high profile have also made her a magnet for lucrative sponsorships. Today Patrick remains one of the most popular women in sports and routinely ranks among the highest paid female athletes in the world.
Lindsey Vonn
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Having won gold in downhill and bronze in super-G at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, alpine skier Lindsey Vonn was easily the biggest American star heading into the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. So when Vonn pulled out in January due to lingering injury issues, NBC struggled to reinvent its marketing plan in the absence of the country’s most recognizable face.
Vonn has been competing internationally for over a decade and her 59 World Cup victories are just three short of tying, and four short of surpassing, Annemarie Moser-Pröll’s record of 62. Not long after suffering the knee injury that would ultimately keep her out of Sochi, Vonn’s celebrity reached an entirely new level in March 2013 when she and golfer Tiger Woods announced they were dating.
Ronda Rousey
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Ronda Rousey was a complete unknown when she won the bronze medal in women’s judo at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Following the Olympics, she decided to pursue a career in MMA, having great success with Tuff-N-Uff and Strikeforce events early on.
Rousey hit the big time in November 2012, when she became the first female fighter to sign with the UFC. Months later she made history again as the first female to headline an event at UFC 157. Rousey is still undefeated in MMA, and with modeling and acting work keeping her busy in between fights, her star shows no sign of fading.
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