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PART I Pioneering Women in Sport Part I takes a closer look at just a few of the hundreds, even thousands of women who have acted as pioneers in particular sports or specific eras. The selections explore what it means to be one of the first women to break down gender barriers, and sometimes additional obstacles of racial or economic discrimination. Given the impossibility of creating even a representative sample of women who succeeded against the odds, we have chosen to present a few of the women who were uniquely important athletes of their time, winning fame (or sometimes infamy) and inspiring others to seek similar achievements. We begin with Jennifer Hargreave’s history of women’s involvement in the modern Olympic Games, still the most prestigious and spectacular of all international competitions. After charting the International Olympic Committee’s opposition to any female participation, she shows how, by creating a popular alternative to the Olympics in the 1920s and ’30s, a special Women’s Olympics, a group of shrewd European organizers pressured the IOC into opening Olympic events to women rather than allowing a rival group to gain control of women’s athletics. After detailing women’s early participation in the Games, Hargreaves looks at the persistent opposition (even after their official acceptance) to female competitors, and especially gender equality, in the Olympics. She argues that the competition that matters most is not that which occurs in arenas or on playing fields but rather the struggle for control of sports organizations and resources, which remains the basis of men’s dominance of the sports world even as women approach equal rates of participation. Part I then moves away from the general to the specific through Frances Willard’s account of how she learned to ride the bicycle in her fifties. One of the most renowned political organizers of her time, Willard headed the largest single organization of American women in the nineteenth century, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Faced with the need to improve her health, Willard describes how learning to ride a simple “machine”—the two-wheeled bicycle—gave her a confidence and joy unlike anything she had ever experienced, linking these feelings to a much wider sense of women’s growing physical competence and freedom during that era. 2 WOMEN AND SPORTS IN THE UNITED STATES Two generations later, Babe Didrikson took similarly bold strides by achieving success in sports firmly associated with masculine skill and prowess. This “World-Beating Viking Girl from Texas” (a Texan born to Norwegian immigrants ) discovered that victory in “masculine” sports brought equal parts condemnation and admiration. Nevertheless, the rough-edged working-class champion stared her critics down, often through a disarmingly sharp wit. She posted remarkable records of athletic achievement throughout her life, first in track and field, then basketball and baseball, and eventually as a founder and dominating presence in the Ladies Professional Golf Association, the first successful professional endeavor of any women’s sport. If Didrikson broke barriers of class and dared to go where few women had gone before, Althea Gibson faced a different set of obstacles in her quest to enter the elite world of tennis, a sport in which privileged white women had long found acceptance. Mary Jo Festle analyzes Gibson’s early career as she fought for the necessary invitations from the stodgy United States Lawn Tennis Association to participate in major events. Gibson finally overcame exclusionary policies in the late 1950s to become the first African American to win both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, paving the way for the popular acceptance of other remarkable black women like sprinter Wilma Rudolph, who won three gold medals at the 1960 Olympics. J. E. Vader’s essay “Pioneers” looks at athletes who achieved similar breakthroughs in sports that generally receive less media attention. Vader tracks the careers of marathoner Roberta Gibb, jockey Diane Crump, and Little Leaguer Maria Pepe who, in 1966, 1969, and 1972, respectively, became the first women to run the Boston Marathon, ride in a pari-mutuel race, and play as a registered girl in Little League Baseball. In telling the stories of these three athletes, Vader simultaneously poses a critical question: how did such pioneering contributions not only radicalize sports but also transform the athletes who battled tremendous sexism in their athletic endeavors? Few events have had more radical impact, and obvious feminist purpose, than the infamous 1973 tennis “Battle of the Sexes” in which Billie...

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